Transcript of public session: Mr Robert Justham, Ms Sevi Yesildalli and Mr Russell Mills of the Metropolitan Police Trades Unions

Thursday, 1 April 2004
10.30 am

Sir William Morris: Good morning, everyone. Could I first of all say a very warm and cordial welcome to you, Mr Justham, and indeed to your colleagues. Let me say that we want to start by thanking you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry to give evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission, which we found extremely helpful.

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

But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel: first, on my right, is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the police service; and on my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister who sits as a recorder, and also as a part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

Mr Justham, 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. 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, by character or nature, adversarial. We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendations for further good practice within the MPS, rather than concentrate on making criticisms of the organisation or the individuals employed by it.

To help us in our task, we are keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but what is right with it; more importantly, we are very keen to hear what needs to be done to put things right, if we do establish that not everything is right.

Let me say for the record that a transcript is being taken, so that we have a proper record of the evidence given by our witnesses, and this will be posted on our website later today.

At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you and your colleagues, followed by, first, Miss Weekes, and followed next 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 for a brief closing comment if you wish.

You have helpfully provided us with a written submission, and you have also indicated areas around which we will seek to explore some questions with you. In your submission, you have set out a whole range of information by way of headings.

Just for the record, I will highlight as many as is necessary. Firstly, a description of the Metropolitan trade unions, you have structured how you operate; police staff and their status within the Metropolitan Police Service; your consulting and negotiating process; and the Metropolitan Police Service culture.

You have also talked about diversity within the Met, and you have talked about the MPS' policies, practices and procedures, as well as training provisions and the trade union and staff support association; and finally, you have indicated comments regarding the Virdi Inquiry recommendations.

We naturally want to ask you questions about some of those issues and the material you have submitted, and we find those materials of extreme interest. But before I move on to the questions, perhaps for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder whether you would mind formally introducing yourself and your colleagues to the Inquiry.

Mr Justham: Good morning, and thank you, Sir William, for that introductory remark. My name is Robert Justham. Today is my first day as Secretary of the MET-TUS side, having spent seven years as the deputy secretary, so it is quite an important day for myself as well.

The MET-TUS side is what you would know from the civil service as the trade union side. We act as a co-ordinating committee on areas of mutual concern for the four unions within the Metropolitan Police.

I am accompanied at this Inquiry this morning by two of my colleagues from the constituent unions, Ms Yesildalli, who is from the Public and Commercial Services Union, and is the president of the Metropolitan Police group, as well as being on the national executive committee of that union. The PCSU is the largest union within the Metropolitan Police, and represents generalists but also some specialists, like CAD operators, and jailers and station reception operators.

My other colleague is Russell Mills from Prospect Union, who represents specialist grades, for instance photographers, SOCOs, fingerprint specialists; so they have a specialist representation there. That is the introduction.

Sir William Morris: Thank you, we are grateful to all of you.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Let me start with your submission at paragraph 5, I think it is, dealing with negotiation and consultation processes, and I see that in the year 2001, the joint trade unions signed a partnership agreement with the Metropolitan Police Service. That said, I note from the commentary which follows the heading of that particular paragraph that there seems to be some reservations about the way the agreement is working in practice. But just to establish the agreement in context, perhaps you could tell me who from the trade union sides were the signatures, who signed the agreement?

Mr Justham: It was the full-time officers for each of the constituent unions at the time, so that would have been from PCS, IPMS, as it was at the time of starting, AEWU and the FDA. AEWU, now Amicus, of course.

Sir William Morris: Was the agreement signed by, if you like, the national officials –

Mr Justham: Yes, it was the national full-time officers.

Sir William Morris: Can I ask whether they have been made aware of the concerns that you are experiencing locally in terms of its interpretation and implementation?

Mr Justham: Yes, we have regular quarterly meetings of MET-TUS, and the full-time officers sit on that committee.

Sir William Morris: That is fine. Just in your own words, apart from reading what is written here, just sort of getting between the lines, so to speak, can you tell us how the agreement is actually operating on the ground? I read the point that consultation only takes place when the issue is not contentious, and I also read that a number of issues around the working time directive and Fairness at Work – unilateral implementation has taken place without agreement.

I am just sort of wanting to understand the general culture as to how this agreement is operating at a workplace level.

Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that centrally, as we say in our submission, we have quite good access to management board and senior members of the management team. And it would also be fair to say that because we are included on a number of steering groups and project boards, we are kept aware of some of the more strategic issues in the organisation that tend to be formally set up, with project boards and management boards.

Where we tend to find the problem is at local BOCU level, and it is very patchy across the organisation from borough to borough. Some boroughs where we have a good relationship between the lead representative and the borough commander and his personnel managers. In other boroughs, we do not necessarily have that good relationship, and therefore, where the borough commander is positive in consultation and actually involves the lead representative on their senior management team, and invites them to attend meetings for certain parts of that meeting, we tend to find that there is quite a good relationship. But in other boroughs, the borough commander may not even know who the lead representative is and may not meet with them regularly. We find we have problems there.

Sir William Morris: Let me just try and understand how the structure works. Take consultation: do you have regular diaried meetings for your consultative meetings, like third Thursday of every quarter or something like that, or is it ad hoc?

Mr Justham: No, as I said, centrally, there is quite a good structure. We meet on an informal basis with management board once a month, and two of those meetings during the year are formally minuted meetings, and those minutes are circulated in the form of a police notice.

Also to supplement that, we again have monthly meetings informally with the ACHR or his deputy, as a sort of a pre-meet for those management board meetings, because the majority of our concerns, if we are truthful, are around human resources and personnel policies. Consequently, he has agreed to meet us on a monthly basis, so those concerns can be dealt with before a formal management board meeting.

But if they are not dealt with in those meetings, we have the right to take that forward to management board. Also we have a number of consultative meetings and we are involved in project boards around a number of specific policy implementations, and so centrally and formally, we are quite well served.

Some of the problems we do find with being formally involved in project boards is obviously we only make up one member of a project board or a steering group, and consequently, sometimes our concerns on behalf of staff can be lost in the committee structure, because obviously the bulk of the staff or the representatives on that committee are actually members of management, and are speaking on behalf of their units, whereas our one representative is hopefully representing the views of staff, but it is not so easy for them to actually come out with forthright comments at those committees. Of course, they always have to refer to the trade unions and membership below them.

Sir William Morris: Am I right in assuming that you have separated out your terms and conditions negotiations from the routine of consultation? Because they are naturally a different process, but am I right in that, that they have been separated out and dealt with differently?

Mr Justham: Yes, to a greater extent – we do have also a twice-yearly personnel consultative meeting where those sort of issues around the terms and conditions are discussed. Pay and associated terms and conditions are also discussed separately by the individual trade unions as individual sovereign bodies who come together separately from the MET-TUS structure to discuss pay and terms and conditions related to pay.

Sir William Morris: Okay. My colleagues and I are quite intrigued as we look at the documentation that has been submitted to us and read and try to understand, and perhaps you can help us here. We have the unions which are represented here this morning, led by your good self and Ms Yesildalli, and we also met with the other long established trade union yesterday, the Federation, which represents uniformed officers.

But from the evidence that we have been privileged to read so far, we see that there are 14 support groups within the Metropolitan Police Service. What we would like you to share with us is: if we have established trade unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress for the staff, and we have got a Police Federation which is long established, statutorily constituted, why do we need support groups at all; and in any event, why do we need 14? Can you help us on that?

Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that we have some concerns around staff support associations and their role in the organisation. Whilst we support the fact that they should exist, and they are helpful in representing certain areas of concern, we do have concerns around the fact that it is becoming harder to get a clear line of communication with management around consultation.

At the moment, we are trying to obtain a protocol between us and the staff associations to actually set out where each of us has a responsibility, because whilst staff associations may have some interests around terms and conditions, we do not see their role as negotiating terms and conditions, that is a role for the trade unions, and also around personal representation of members in personal cases. We have found some conflicts around those sort of issues, and I am sure later on my colleagues will be able to comment on their specific experiences around that, because those issues are really dealt with by the constituent trade unions.

So we have actually been trying to address these concerns by trying to get the protocol agreed with the staff associations to actually set out clearly what each of our responsibilities are within the organisation.

Up until now, it is only the Disabled Staff Association that has actually come back to us and agreed on the protocols.

Sir William Morris: I am sure that as our conversation develops, my colleagues will want to pick that point up and perhaps explore further, but just one final question from me on that point: do I assume that members of the police staff – I know where the Federation, the uniformed officers stand on the thing – but do I assume that members of the civilian staff, the police staff that you represent, some of those trade union members are also members of support groups, associations as well?

Mr Justham: Yes, they can be. I believe it depends on the particular staff support association, but I believe that –

Sir William Morris: Some of them are.

Mr Justham: If not all of them, the majority allow police staff to be members.

Sir William Morris: That is fine, thank you. If I can move on now, I would be interested in hearing from you about the experience of police staff, in particular experience around diversity issues. Can you tell us whether the Metropolitan Police Service diversity policy is delivering the objectives for staff representation within the group that you and your colleagues represent?

Mr Justham: We have slight concerns about whether it is delivering what it intends to do. The Met have invested a lot of time and opportunity costs in diversity within the organisation, and occasionally, you can get the impression that perhaps too much time is spent on it, because you are never totally sure what committee you are actually attending, and what the actual objectives of those committees are, and we do spend a lot of our time sitting on various steering groups around diversity and race relations issues.

But in general, we feel that there is still an impression within the organisation, particularly amongst police staff, that the Met is not delivering totally on its commitment to diversity.

Sir William Morris: Have they been challenged on failure to implement in respect of the diversity provisions?

Mr Justham: We challenge regularly at any meeting we attend, around those issues.

Sir William Morris: And when these issues are raised with the management, do you see an improvement, continuous, or is it just sort of responsive and then falls back to the old ways? How is that manifesting itself?

Mr Justham: I think in general, management are very receptive to our points, and they do listen, and we do notice change in the organisation. Certainly in the five or six years that I have been involved in trade unions formally within the Metropolitan Police, we have noticed a great change in the organisation, and it is improving, although obviously we do not feel that it is improving quite enough.

Sir William Morris: I wonder if I could ask you to take a look at paragraphs 7.2 and 7.3 of your submission. It is on screen, if the technology works, you should have it up before you.

You have indicated there that the minority ethnic police staff are concentrated in the lower grades, have lower retention levels, and they take longer to progress.

You also say that they also experience overt racist behaviour. Can you give us some examples of the racist behaviour being experienced by ethnic minority police staff, and say what steps the trade unions that you represent are taking to stamp out this racist behaviour towards ethnic minority members of your organisations?

Mr Justham: Well, I think it is probably best if I refer to the case study that we provided within our submission, and also, I am aware that you have received additional information on that case study.

It was a case study from a station reception officer who was involved in receiving – signing for a producer when a police officer came in to register a stolen vehicle, and also to note his insurance papers. The member of police staff noted the date on the papers, but did not make cognisance of the time of the insurance papers being issued, so consequently, it turned out later that the insurance papers had been timed after the incident that was complained about.

One of the problems we perceived in this was assumptions were made about the two individuals involved in this case, around their particular race, and consequently, the Met police appeared to act heavy handedly in dealing with this issue, because it made assumptions purely because of the race of the two individuals involved.

And consequently, we are trying to raise these issues in negotiations later on; we raise them at the time we have personal cases like this, and point out in the individual cases that these things are going on, and we also try and raise these and use these as illustrative issues when we meet with the AC on a regular basis, to try and get things changed, and to try and get some consistency within the organisation.

Because what we tend to find is there is an inconsistency around personnel issues within the organisation, because of the fact that it is a decentralised organisation now.

Sir William Morris: Okay, thank you. One of the issues that is exercising our minds, and it is because it falls within our terms of reference in relation to workplace matters, is employment tribunals, both in terms of quantitative evaluation and some of the issues around time delays, and issues such as that.

Can you give us examples of cases where the Met trade unions that you represent have supported ethnic minority members at employment tribunals on grounds of discrimination?

Mr Justham: I think if I can ask one of my colleagues to answer this question? As I said earlier in my submission, the actual constituent trade unions deal with discipline cases and employment tribunals, and it is not something I feel able to answer.

Sir William Morris: Yes, of course.

Ms Yesildalli: Thank you. With the race cases at employment tribunals, a lot of the time what we find is the individual reps dealing with such personal cases are quite often unfacilitated by management when it comes to pursuing the case and everything else.

Most of them, we find that we can actually resolve within the Met, without actually going to tribunal. The difficulty we have throughout the trade union itself, especially with PCS, is that it has to have a success rate. When we send our cases off for legal advice and everything else, before we can submit the tribunal, it comes back with the success rate attached to it, and quite often we find that actually we cannot represent them at tribunal.

Sir William Morris: I am sure my colleagues will want to explore the criteria for determining the viability or success rate going forward, but I will not trouble you with that at the moment, but as I have said, I am sure that my colleagues will want to hear a little bit more about it, and in particular, how the relationship is handled internally before you get out to the tribunals.

You have made some observations about training within the service, and you refer to the Metropolitan Police Service training budget as somewhere in the region – in excess of £86 million.

Could I ask: how does the training budget get divided between officers on the one hand and staff training on the others? In short, do you think you are getting a fair deal in terms of the division for this group of employees of the MPS?

Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that our position is we do not feel the police staff are getting a fair deal. Whilst we recognise that the police service is obviously primarily about policing London, we do feel that police staff provide a vital support – and in a growing number of cases now, actual frontline staff to that, therefore we do feel that the budgets are not being fairly divided.

It would be fair to say that the Met have noted our concerns around training, and they have now set up a police staff training board which we have representation on. It is quite early days within that process, and for instance, we are looking to see how much the Met police will support some of our initiatives, like for instance learning representatives within the workplace. I think from that point of view, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating: to see whether they actually do support us on those issues and whether they can be successful and whether there is an improvement around that.

We also have concerns around the level of management training within the organisation, because we – whilst the organisation has devolved a large amount of management responsibility to the lowest level that it can within the organisation, we are not entirely convinced that it has actually supported that move of responsibility down by giving the appropriate training to staff.

Certainly the amount of training that police staff receive has gone down a great deal since I joined the organisation, although again, we do have a commitment from management that each member of police staff will receive at least two days' training a year, and that is a start, but obviously, we will be looking to actually put pressure on management with our involvement in the police staff training board to actually try and improve things.

Sir William Morris: Thank you for that, you have answered one of my other questions, so I will move on.

I want to move on to the aspect of what has been described as the culture within the Metropolitan Police Service, and take you to your submission at paragraph 6.3. Again, it is on the screen, you should see it as it is written.

You refer there to the Metropolitan Police Service culture being, and I quote, based on legalistic values. Could I invite you to expand on the statement "based on legalistic values"?

Mr Justham: I think our experience, particularly in the way the Metropolitan Police deal with personal cases and discipline, is that they are very quick to move to the formal – I am sure my colleagues can give you examples of where what would appear to be minor incidents of discipline or inefficiency are actually dealt with in a way we would call heavy handed by moving straight into requiring taped interviews, requiring individuals to be there to take notes and minutes, whereas we would see that a lot of these issues could actually be dealt with informally, as an informal management action at the earliest stage.

However, it tends to be the culture of the Met that they move to requiring taped interviews at a very early stage in a number of cases, which tends to raise the stakes when it comes to actually dealing with the individuals.

Sir William Morris: Let me just be clear in my mind here, because whilst the methodology of approach that you have just described has been offered to us in respect of the uniform officers, am I to understand that that same legalistic approach in terms of moving quickly to a formalised position is also true in the relationship with the civilian staff?

Mr Justham: It is our experience that in a number of cases, it is. One of the areas that we pointed out in our submission around training is that we feel that not enough training is given to police officers, in the differences between police staff and police officers when it comes to terms and conditions, and in the way of dealing with discipline cases.

So consequently, in a number of situations now, a police officer will be the immediate line manager of a member of police staff, or possibly the second line manager, and consequently, they tend to default to their experiences of the police discipline.

We feel that this is particularly the case in areas like PCSOs, who have been recruited without a police staff management structure, who are actually being managed directly by police officers, in the majority of cases, and I am not sure whether any of my colleagues can actually give you formal examples of these instances where they have happened.

Mr Mills: If I could offer a comment of the examples I have encountered, when Mr Justham refers to legalistic processes, it tends to be used against us. I have actually had instances where I had a case and we tried to resolve it informally, and then we were presented with a legal opinion that said we had run out of time for a tribunal. So that was almost used as a reason for us to comply with the way that the personnel manager wanted to go, rather than to explore other avenues. It was almost a case of, "Well, you have got to comply now because you have run out of time, and our legal advice is this".

That seems to be more prevalent in what I would call the more difficult cases; if you are dealing with a case where they think there are significant – maybe compensation or financial issues, they go to legal advice without prior warning to that effect, and the first we know of it is when a set of photocopies comes across the table that effectively says, "Well, our legal advice is you have not got a case".

Sir William Morris: Yes, I see. How do you actually respond? Do you get your own legal advice, or how does the trade union respond to that situation?

Mr Mills: Exactly as you have anticipated. It leaves us with no choice but to go to our own legal advisors, and then you get the contrary opinion. You only get the bit of legal advice that they feel balances their case. When you ask for the full copies, they are not forthcoming.

Sir William Morris: So it becomes a battle with the absent lawyers.

Mr Mills: Yes, you have to up the ante, and it does not give us the flexibility we would like.

Sir William Morris: Okay. You have used the phrase "the difference between the two", making reference to civilian staff and indeed officers; that takes me to the next area I just want to explore with you.

We had Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the HM Inspector, giving evidence earlier on in the Inquiry, and he talked to us about a process of what he called increasing civilianisation, that is to say civilian and uniform staff working closer together; and, if you like, the areas, the demarcation line, is being blurred quite significantly.

If I recall correctly, I think he suggested to us that there is some consideration, a working party or a consultative document was emanating from the Home Office on this phase of future development.

I wonder if you recognise the phrase "civilianisation", and if you do, what are the long term implications for your members and for the police service as you see it?

Mr Justham: We do recognise the word "civilianisation", and in fact we have met, as the Met trade union side, with the HMI inspectors around the civilianisation thematic. I am also aware that I have been involved in a workshop that was organised by Unison with the HMI to actually bottom out some of the concerns around civilianisation.

Our basic attitude could probably be best summed up by the statement that we feel that any job within the Metropolitan Police that does not involve the use of police officer powers should be carried out by a member of police staff.

We feel that the process is hampered to a certain extent by the political imperative on police officer numbers, which has meant that a police officer, whatever role they are carrying out within the organisation, is a police officer, and consequently shows up on police officer numbers, whether or not they are actually out patrolling and doing jobs that the public would see as roles carried out by police officers, or whether they are in the office carrying out a job that we would see as a police staff job.

And consequently, we feel that the debate needs to go on to be a bit more sophisticated than just talking about police officer numbers, but actually looking at the roles that police officers are carrying out.

There was a review into civilianisation carried out on behalf of the MPA which had noted a number of roles that could be considered for civilianisation, because of the nature of them, and the Met were looking to actually carry out the recommendations of that report.

However, there have been some concerns from our side that the Met are not totally committed to that, and are actually reviewing what they are looking at civilianisation. So we are changing from actually changing current jobs from being done by a police officer to being done by a member of police staff, but they are also starting to include new roles that are being identified that may in previous times have been carried out by a police officer, but now they are actually looking to consider using police staff to carry them out.

An example of that is the civilian detention officers, which might have been a role that would have been carried out by a police officer in past times, but actually, it is a new role that they have considered as a police staff role.

So there are areas of positive as well as what we would see as negative; of course, we still feel there are too many uniformed police officers in the office doing what we would call back room functions, when they should be out patrolling and carrying out policing functions.

Sir William Morris: Yes. Can you see this sort of continuous evolvement of technology significantly shifting the balance between the two groups? I mean, can you see the police officer out on the beat with his palm-held computer, accessing all sort of information which normally would have come through a different route?

Mr Justham: Yes, well, one of my roles as deputy secretary was consultation around C3I/Metcall, and there are lots of initiatives around mobile data terminals and that sort of thing which in the future could increase that. And also one of the advantages of C3I/Metcall is the fact they are looking to civilianise more of the roles of CAD operators. It gives them a better flexibility to actually make more of those roles police staff roles. The hope and the vision is to actually make all of those roles police staff roles within the command and control system, so there are positives around there.

Though there is concerns again around the Disability Discrimination Act, and how much that will impact on the number of police officers carrying out desk jobs, and we are not totally convinced that the Met have quite embraced that yet, are aware of the consequences that might bring.

Sir William Morris: Has there been any consultation between the organisation that you represent, the trade unions here, and the Federation on this issue of civilianisation? Have you been having discussions with your colleagues in the Fed?

Mr Justham: We tend not to have formal relationships with the Federation in that way, although we both sit on the civilianisation project board. We tend to find that we come from different directions around civilianisation. There is a concern that the Federation have not necessarily been open to civilianisation in the past, whereas we see that when it has happened, it has normally been of benefit to the organisation.

An example of that is station reception officers. When they were initially brought into the organisation, there was a bit of scepticism about how successful they would be, but I think our view is that they have proved over the years that actually having someone dedicated to doing station reception officer work has actually improved the service that they give to the public, whereas previously, it was whichever police officer happened to be allocated to that job during the day.

So we feel there are examples where civilianisation has improved the service, and that can be demonstrated.

Sir William Morris: Yes, good. Can I move on to that area of your submission which talks about the issue of misconduct in relation to police staff? We will have it up, as you can see, on the screen before you. You have indicated there that there has been a fair amount of devolution of responsibility down to local level, but it is true to say that you are highlighting the variability of the knowledge base of the different line managers, and the result of that, as you see it, and I quote, is haphazard and inconsistent application of the disciplinary procedure; your words.

Can I ask: what proposals do the Met trade unions have in place for putting right what you have described as haphazard and inconsistent application of the disciplinary procedure?

Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that what we would like to see is a return to a certain amount of the more serious disciplines being dealt with centrally, as was the case before 1997. We feel that because misconduct has been devolved to a lower level, and therefore the number of serious misconduct cases that an individual line manager may carry out during their career is not that great – in fact, some line managers may not have to be involved in anything like that at any time.

When issues do come up, the way they are dealt with is not necessarily the way we would want to see them dealt with, so we would like to see a return to the central discipline process that existed before 1997.

Sir William Morris: It is obviously a matter for concern for you and your colleagues, but let me ask: the haphazardness and the inconsistent application, has it got any proportionate implications? To put it bluntly, does this inconsistent and haphazard implementation of the disciplinary procedure, as a result of lack of knowledge, say, by local managers – does it impact negatively on ethnic minority staff to a higher degree than it does on other staff?

Mr Justham: I think the problem we have around that is because, as we put in our submission, the ethnic minority staff are better represented amongst police staff, it can be quite hard to define whether the problem is around ethnic minority staff or whether it is around police staff in general.

Sir William Morris: Okay.

Mr Justham: I do not know whether one of my colleagues would have a further comment on that, because as I said, they deal mainly with the cases.

Mr Mills: I think the only opinion I would offer on that is it becomes very difficult with this devolved system to get statistics that could illustrate either way. We encountered a very similar problem around annual appraisals, where we asked for statistics to see if there were trends, and the emerging findings started to indicate to us that it was a problem, that there was this ethnicity bias.

Certainly we would view it that we would not be at all surprised if that emerged around disciplines and misconducts, and we have been asking exactly that question.

As Mr Justham quite rightly said, we have been pushing for more monitoring from the centre to establish if we can see these trends, and at the moment, that is not as ideal as we would like.

Sir William Morris: My question was induced by the fact that we have heard evidence that local managers who manage police officers are reluctant to carry out the normal functions of – managerial functions of dealing with discipline, on the basis that they are, if you like, fearful of being charged with discrimination. So instead of being managed efficiently, it has been suggested they are being managed by retreat, referring the matter upwards rather than dealing with it, and that bears out the legalistic approach which we have explored earlier.

I wondered in my mind, and that is what induced my question, bearing in mind what you have talked about, inconsistency and haphazardness, whether there was any manifestation of the same principles of management not managing, or where they are managed due to the lack of their own skills and training, there was a negative impact on certain groups within the workforce.

But you have given an answer which I am satisfied with.

Mr Justham: I think it would also be fair that that is our experience – although we could not give you any hard evidence on that.

One of the problems also I think we have established is that management skills, personnel skills, are not necessarily one of the pre-emptives of promoting individuals in the current organisation. Recently, police staff have moved from a grade based system to having a band system, in which various jobs – you are actually promoted into the job, and that job has specific guidelines.

So consequently, we do not feel that management skills are – or enough respect is paid to management skills in the promotional process. So consequently, you are promoting someone who is good at a job, but then who happens to pick up management skills later on – or you hope that they will – but without giving them the proper support to do that.

Sir William Morris: I have just one last question to you, it is by way of an invitation to you, but let me preface the invitation by saying this: during my introduction, I said that we were not just interested in hearing what is wrong with the meetings service, we also are interested in hearing what is right with it, but most importantly, we want to hear from our witnesses what needs to be done to make it better in those terms.

Against that background, it has been suggested to us that our task is an unenviable one; that may be right, it may be wrong. Be that as it may, we have to produce a report which will affect the people that you represent, your members, in the police service, as police service staff.

As senior representatives of that group of employees, you will be aware of the problems, the highs, the lows, the good, the bad, and you are experts in that field.

We have to write a report, if we were to invite you to write one chapter of our report, with your knowledge, what would you say?

Mr Justham: I think I would look at the relationship between police staff and police officers, and try and work towards having one workforce, and move away from the differentiation between the two, because we can see from the number of different roles that police staff are taking up now, they are actually becoming more operational and more placed in the frontline, but we do not feel they are necessarily getting the full support that the police officer would get in those situations.

So I think it would be – our comments around the one organisation, trying to have a commonality around that.

Sir William Morris: Utopia!

Mr Justham: That is my own personal view; I am not sure about saying that without referring to my colleagues.

Sir William Morris: I am happy for them to offer a view if they wish.

Mr Mills: I think I would make the topic training, because I think certainly with the extra effort the Met has been pouring into raising the awareness of their managers of all the issues around diversity, that has helped improve things. It has certainly made people aware that they need to improve their outlook when dealing with such issues, so I would say that that has been a sad commentary on the Met that the training for police staff is woefully inadequate, and I do believe that would improve things immeasurably, if everybody had regular and consistent managerial training around diversity issues.

Sir William Morris: Right, well, can I just say that completes my initial questions, and I want straight away to turn to Miss Weekes, I know that she has one or two questions she would like to put to you and your colleagues.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Thank you. Can I go back to the question of your relationship or non-relationship with the Police Federation? I know that your comments were that because effectively the representative groups are really different, there is not necessity for coming together. I am not suggesting that you should.

But you have commented that your chapter would be the relationship between police officers and staff, and you would wish it to be closer. Having separate unions keeps that separate, does it not?

Mr Justham: Unfortunately, our view of the Police Federation is not necessarily that they are a union, because they do not appear to have the same responsibilities to their membership as we do. There are different areas around the fact that they are set up by statute, and we have to live more on democracy, within our organisations.

We have to actually go out and actively recruit our membership; the Police Federation is more membership by default, as I think I am right in understanding that all police officers are members of the Federation whether or not they pay subscriptions or not. Whereas we have to be more positive in our recruitment to ensure that we are representative of the bulk of police staff.

So I think there are concerns around that which make it very hard to have a close relationship with the Federation. In the past, we have, around certain issues that were mutually helpful to us – before the police officers were included under the Health and Safety Act, we had quite a close relationship with the Federation around health and safety, and that has continued following the police officers coming under the Health and Safety Act, so there are areas where we have similar concerns and similar fears.

However, on a number of occasions, where we are dealing with consultation, sometimes our views and needs are actually diametrically opposed to the Federation.

An example of that is the introduction of PCSOs into the organisation. Whilst we have a number of concerns about how they have been introduced, the amount of training, their pay and conditions, we support their existence within the organisation. However, the Police Federation have always appeared to be opposed to PCSOs coming into the organisation, and have in the past put up a number of barriers to what we would see as their successful introduction to the organisation, and may have contributed to some of the concerns that we are now finding around PCSOs, because the appearance is that they have not welcomed PCSOs into the organisation.

Miss Weekes: Can I just follow up on that helpful explanation one point, and it is your description that you would not yourself class the Police Federation as a classical union as such, if I can use my words.

How does that demonstrate itself in practical terms, when it comes to representing a large number of people who would not normally have a voice unless they had representation?

Mr Justham: If I understand your question right, you are asking me about my views about the Police Federation and how they are – in a lot of ways, we are jealous of what the Police Federation has, because on so many levels, they are supported much more by the organisation than we are.

The Police Federation have reps on boroughs, who are given formal accommodation. The majority of them are working full time or with a high degree of facility time on their borough, and being allowed to carry out that role.

Whereas for police staff, we tend to find, certainly locally, we have a lot of problems around allocation of facility time, and one of my concerns going back to the partnership agreement was the hope with that was because it was devolving union representation down to a local level, the fact that lead reps in a borough would only really need the facility time that they needed to carry out work on their local borough – our hope was that that would lighten the role on central representatives, because obviously the local representative would only be dealing with problems that the borough had caused, and therefore the borough should be giving them time to deal with that.

We have noted that that is not necessarily the case and there are barriers put in front of our local representatives from actually taking the facility time they need to deal with the issues at a local level. One of the ways of easing our concerns around devolution of misconduct and this sort of thing would be to ensure our local reps had the facility time they needed to deal with those problems at the lowest possible level.

Consequently, we see a lot of problems with the Federation, because we see that they have so much in the way of facilities, and they can also fall back on the law and statutes to defend their members, whereas we must argue more broadly and actually try and get balance of probability in discipline cases, for instance, whereas the assumption – my personal feeling is that in a misconduct that involves a police officer and a member of police staff, the police officer is almost perceived as being innocent, whereas the member of police staff, well, that is not quite the case, so there is not necessarily that sort of defence of the member of police staff that has been involved in a similar situation to the police officer.

I think that is one of our concerns over our relationship with the Federation, that in a number of areas where we want to see increased civilianisation, the feeling is that possibly they do not want to see that.

Miss Weekes: Undoubtedly because of their statutory protections.

Mr Justham: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Do you think that is ever going to change? You are not statutory and they are; is that ever going to change?

Mr Justham: I would like to think that it could do, but I am not sure that it would change in the way that I would want it to change.

Miss Weekes: How would you want to bring about that change?

Mr Justham: Well, I would like to see more rights for the trade unions, and bring them up on a level playing field with the Federation. However, the only way I see it changing is that the Federation may be brought down to a level playing field with the trade unions.

Miss Weekes: To put it bluntly, they should give up their statutory basis.

Mr Justham: I am not arguing that, because I am arguing that I would want to see the trade unions given more rights and authorities on a statutory basis. However, I am not sure that there is ever going to be political will to allow that to happen.

Miss Weekes: Can I move to two questions I have about the staff, because you really are the eyes and ears of the staff in the Metropolitan Police; correct? And all staff.

Mr Justham: All police staff, yes, we have representation rights for all police staff.

Miss Weekes: I first of all want to deal with the terms and conditions of employment. Do you have any helpful comments that you can tell us that we should bear in mind when we come to consider, you know, the overall view? Are you happy with the terms and conditions of employment? Do they affect the staff in relation to complaints, discipline, training, all the issues that fall within our terms of reference?

Mr Justham: I think in general, I would say that terms and conditions – bearing in mind I am being recorded – could be regarded as being reasonable. I think one of our main concerns is, though, that new groups of staff being introduced into the service appear to be being introduced on diminished terms and conditions.

The worry is that that seems to be the way that the MPA want to go with terms and conditions, and actually move away from some of our terms and conditions, so, for instance, PCSOs and detention officers are actually being recruited on slightly poorer terms and conditions, and that is a concern, because we have not been involved in any consultation around terms and conditions before they were introduced; they were just introduced, and therefore we are having to fight in retrospect to try and get their terms and conditions improved to the level that we enjoy.

Miss Weekes: The process and procedures by which staff are dealt with when complaints are brought, internal disciplinary, the new Fairness at Work – I am going to come to Fairness at Work in a moment, but I really just want to deal with the structure and procedure. Are you happy with that?

Mr Justham: If I could defer to Russell around that, because as I said, he has more expertise in dealing with the –

Miss Weekes: Can I just preface my question by saying that I have compared your procedures, the flow chart, to the flow chart for the officers, and I must say, I find it far more digestible and readable, and I can follow the one for the staff. But I think it is right for you to help us as to what you think presently is your view about those procedures.

Mr Mills: Well, we did not have a problem with the Fairness at Work in principle. The issue arose over how they were going to pick their Fairness at Work advisors, and if you like, the component members of the scheme.

Because of the haste with which it was inevitably required to be introduced, we ended up with a situation where the Met was not able to get enough people to stand up and take part in the Fairness at Work as it would have liked.

As a sort of default option, they then dropped back and started more or less appointing people to the role. Now the difficult –

Miss Weekes: Can I just interrupt slightly? I am going to come to Fairness at Work and deal with exactly the point you raise. Can you just help me as to whether the procedure by which you do things to deal with internal complaints for staff or discipline – is that all right? Would you say that does not need to be altered?

Mr Mills: We do have problems around the internal procedure, because it is based on a local model. Essentially, what you have to do – if you have got a problem with the workplace, it is inevitable that the first person you have to complain to is your line manager.

Now the difficulty that that presents us with is that the line of appeal is that line manager's line manager, and consequently, you end up with a situation where the chances of winning an appeal become very remote, because you tend to find that the managers back their own managers up.

The simple reason for that is that it is almost like a mutual support organisation; if you criticise the guy that is delivering all the work from the rock face, and if you comment adversely about the way he has proceeded with something, then the chances of him delivering the work or her delivering the work at a later date with the same efficacy that they did before is remote.

So you almost get this situation where you have to support the management tiers within itself, and then any complaints are seen as a challenge of the whole structure, as opposed to the problems with one particular individual. So they are very loath to accept criticisms of their junior management or intermediate management.

That then leaves the staff with a view that it is largely pointless challenging a situation, because there is no, if you like, independent or external avenue of approach; it has to go through your line management.

Miss Weekes: That is quite important, and I have to say, that is the first time we have heard it, because, of course, this is the first time we are hearing the staff position in detail. Does that mean that you might consider altering the system to have more independence within that process?

Mr Mills: It would certainly be more attractive to the unions, and we have been pressing for this for ages: one of the proposals we tried to put to the official side was that if there were a problem with a unit on a borough, you could at least transfer it to another borough, but they are very wedded to this idea that local problems require local knowledge and, as such, if you bring in an outside body to review that problem, they will not necessarily be aware of all the, if you like, informal background knowledge that could be pertinent to the case.

Miss Weekes: Well, do you agree with that?

Mr Mills: No, I mean, I would much rather have independence in every case. Certainly when – I mean, I have been around a few years, but when we used to have to refer back to the centre, there was no, if you like, local loyalties to interfere with the process or the decisions.

So you used to find if you went to central personnel with a discipline case, they were much better placed to be objective about the actual evidence of the case, and not take into account that if manager A got criticised by manager B, that might interfere with the work flow.

Miss Weekes: I am particularly interested in going back to the centre, and it is helpful that we have you here, because it is real evidence.

Just how did it work before? Because it is clear you are telling us you prefer what happened before. Can you take me through it?

Mr Mills: What would happen is if a discipline – I will cite the most extreme example. If there was a serious case involved, the local managers would have to prepare their submission, as, if you like, the prosecuting party; the member and then the union official would prepare a defence. Both case papers would then be submitted to the centre. The centre would then appoint –

Miss Weekes: And the centre, what is it?

Mr Mills: This would be like HR at Regency Street, for example. So all the case papers would go to HR at Regency Street who would then appoint, if you like, almost an officer to make a judgment on that. They would then invite the member and his representative to come forward to that meeting. You would then present your case in support of what the paperwork was, and they would more or less make a judgment.

Miss Weekes: Right. Now two things that might be said about that old system, I do not know, we will undoubtedly consider putting it to HR, if they are called back: was it quick? Was it efficient?

Mr Mills: I would not have said that it was any more quicker or efficient than the current system, because obviously the issues there were trying to make people available at the centre.

I would say it was seen as more objective, and to me, that was the greater value of it; at least you felt you were going to get an objective hearing, more so than you would do locally, because there were not these local initiatives and requirements that interfered with the decision.

Miss Weekes: And as you are the ears and eyes of the people you represent, on a straw poll, how many of your staff would say, "Yes, we do want to go back to the central approach"?

Mr Mills: I would say most of them.

Miss Weekes: What is most of them? Try and give me some figures.

Mr Mills: 75 per cent.

Miss Weekes: And you represent how many staff?

Mr Mills: Well, the unions collectively have responsibility for something like 12,000, I think it is.

Miss Weekes: So 75 per cent of 12,000 police staff, at this moment, would prefer the older system of going back to the centre?

Mr Mills: Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: Well, I am sure you have told management this.

Mr Mills: To exhaustion. We have always been advocates of an independent central discipline and conduct process.

Miss Weekes: What is the reply that management tell you, having repeatedly made this request?

Mr Mills: They are wedded to this idea that boroughs have absolute control over their resources, and their issue again is always along the lines of, "Well, we might not be party to all the local information that would be pertinent to the actual case itself". So their defence has always been that the best people to know about, if you like, the validity of the arguments being put to them are the line managers themselves.

Miss Weekes: So the result of what you have at the moment, because they are not picking up on your recommendation, is that staff back off from bringing complaints, is that right?

Mr Mills: I would say that is an element in it, yes.

Miss Weekes: And in any event, those that are brave enough to pursue it, there is not, from your point of view, true independence?

Mr Mills: No.

Miss Weekes: So what would your view be of the result, if members of staff are brave enough to use the present procedure?

Mr Mills: There is a perception amongst the staff themselves that they are burning all their bridges if they make a complaint, so it has to be quite bad for them to make a complaint. Certainly all the time, when I am representing collective opinions to staff, I regularly get asked to do that by anonymising their comments; they are not comfortable with being identified with a comment that is critical.

I also think that it does hamper staff complaining about genuine issues, because their view is: if it is contained and constrained by the local management, then the local management will pay more attention to, if you like, the unit's requirements than a genuine outcome.

Miss Weekes: Why are managers so afraid to deal with criticism?

Mr Mills: There is definitely a perception, it is certainly true in my grades, that if you make one mistake it follows you through your career. That actually does tend to materialise as the real thing: the people who make the serious mistakes find they do not get promoted, because it is so – everybody knows everybody else, and they know everybody else for years and years. It is almost like you cannot recover from a mistake that you made 20 years ago.

I mean, I can remember in the early days representing a case where somebody had thrown at them their performance eight years earlier as a reason that they had made the same mistake twice. Now my view was, "Well, eight years that is a bit of a big separation to say it is a consistent failing for that individual". But that was the trouble: the people dealing with the inquiry were aware of the history and they had never forgotten that.

So the managers are acutely aware that these things will come back to haunt them. They could go before a promotion board, and it would be, "Did you not make this mistake in 1996?"

Miss Weekes: So the managers are covering their backs?

Mr Mills: Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: Well, that is clearly part of the blame culture, is it?

Mr Mills: Yes, it is one of those things where somebody has to carry the blame for the mistake, and it is usually focused down on one individual.

Miss Weekes: What is the way forward? Because this is clearly a very graphic example of why the workplace can be unhappy for a large number of people. What is the way forward?

Mr Mills: I think it is more about trying to get to the idea that people can make mistakes, and it is not seen as a measure of incompetence, it is just accepted that they might not have been party to the knowledge necessary to deal with that complaint properly.

It does come down to raising awareness and treating staff in such a fashion that they can make mistakes and they will not get pilloried for it.

At the moment in time, we do not have that culture. It is working its way through, and it is not becoming as acute as it was, and it is getting better, but there are still what I would call some of the old guard, "Well, that is the way I always did it, so that is the way I will do it for this week as well".

Miss Weekes: Well, have you spoken to the Assistant Commissioner HR about this very fact?

Mr Mills: We regularly in our monthly meetings convey the idea that we have got this problem with one person being blamed for all the issues, and I think that has partly been our support around the idea of a centralised discipline process, is it actually takes the blame culture away.

It delivers a situation where a third independent party has made a judgment, and they have made it on the case papers that have come to them, and it gets people out of actually having to defend themselves, because a third party has made that decision.

Miss Weekes: If you are going to centralise it, is that going to put pressure back on HR? Are you not going to need more resources?

Mr Mills: Yes, I would say there are economies of scale that do help that, though. I know in the past that HR have defended it on the grounds, "Well, you are going to need to have a significant block of people at the centre", that they do not have now. But I would argue much in support of what Rob Justham said: you have got some very, if you like – well, it is difficult to quantify it, but they are not trained to deal with these things on a regular basis.

As a consequence, exactly, I have had cases where the manager has had a gross misconduct, and he has never dealt with a gross misconduct, so he has no background to the issues around that. He is literally dropped in at the deep end on a very serious issue, because he or she is going to be made aware that they could be taken to a tribunal at a later date, and it makes them very hesitant to be flexible around the issues. It makes them very hesitant to do anything other than stick to the rule book.

My view would be, with a central policy, there is more consistency in the penalties you get throughout the organisation, you are going to make sure that in, say, one borough, A, the penalty for losing your pass is not more severe than it is in borough B, and you can also keep an idea of what the trends are corporately.

So I would say the benefits outweigh the additional resourcing costs.

Miss Weekes: And how long have you been presenting this option to higher management?

Mr Mills: Ever since they devolved it. I mean, literally, when they stepped away from a centralised system and devolved it, we have been arguing that it has not worked from day one to the level it should.

Miss Weekes: I am sorry I dealt with that in detail, but it was very important, and I am very grateful for your assistance on it. Can I come back – I interrupted you on Fairness at Work, because I needed to understand that point.

Can I come back to Fairness at Work, if I may? You were beginning to tell us quite importantly what your views are of this new procedure; it is new because it was set up last year. I think it has now been in place – well, it is almost a year. It began last April, and we are at 1st April today.

Mr Mills: That is correct.

Miss Weekes: Is it working?

Mr Mills: It has had teething problems, but I certainly would say it is a step in the right direction. I think the teething problems arise from – again, we have not got away from, as much as we would like, the almost – very close relationship between the people actually carrying out the process and the units they are working with, because due to the constraints on numbers of people offering to do the work, literally the Met had to appoint its personnel managers as the Fairness at Work advisors.

Now from our point of view, we have encountered problems in the past with the odd personnel manager, and their views of the world, if you like. So we felt that it would actually carry through the bad practice that had occurred in the past, for it to be done this way.

The drawback was that the Met's view, "Well, we need a replacement, we need to do it fast, no one is coming up to put their name in the frame, so we have to find some way of appointing these Fairness at Work advisors".

The problems we were encountering around it were that at the initial stages, it was being made clear that they would not – local units would not have welcomed having certain appointed staff spending all their time on Fairness at Work. So the perception was if you did get volunteers from a local level who were very good at it, they would suddenly find themselves being asked to intervene all over the Met, and as a consequence, their local units would then start turning round and saying, "Well, he or she is never here, they are always off doing Fairness at Work cases".

There is also a perception amongst the staff that they might be arguing or making judgments against very senior figures in the organisation, and we come back to the fear factor there: how do you tell a commander that his decision on a Fairness at Work case was wrong, and that he should have actually done something differently?

Miss Weekes: Just one second.

Sir William Morris: Can I say that I am proposing to adjourn for about five or ten minutes or so. We have some very hard workers over there, the stenographers, and it is our practice to ensure that they have a proper break. So five to ten minutes. Thank you. (11.47 am)

(A short break) (11.55 am)

Sir William Morris: Okay, are you ready? We will recommence then.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much. Just following on from your comments before the short break, I wonder if we might just look at an important comment made within your submissions at MXT 1/18; it will come up on the screen for you. It is at paragraph 8.10; if I could just quickly read it:

"The grievance procedure was replaced by a Fairness at Work policy in 2003. This change arose from the Virdi Inquiry. The intention was to take responsibility for resolving grievances away from line managers and give it to specially trained, independent and impartial Fairness at Work advisors. The trades unions were involved in developing this policy and were very supportive of its underlying principles. We were forced to withdraw our support for the policy when the MPS insisted that local personnel managers identify and select Fairness at Work advisors for their own units."

I think that incorporates what you have already said, but in addition, can I ask you this: have I still withdrawn your support? I mean, what is the status quo at the moment?

Mr Mills: Well, as it stands, we are in the same position we were before, because whilst we are – if you like, we are taking a watching brief of the situation, and seeing how it develops. Our view has always been that there needed to be specialist training for this role, and just giving it to existing staff, albeit that they were personnel managers, was not sufficient, given the seriousness of what they would be dealing with.

Miss Weekes: And that conveniently takes me to the whole topic of training. You identified that in your chapter, in answer to the chairman's question, you would deal with training. Now just give me a little bit of your history, just so that I understand the merit we can give to your answers. You said you have been in this job for some time; how long?

Mr Mills: Well, I started in the fingerprint bureau in 1980 as a trainee fingerprint expert, and I joined the local fingerprint section committee in 1984. I have been active in that committee ever since, and also I have been the branch secretary for over ten years.

Miss Weekes: Right. So you have seen the Met change, and you are familiar with all staff issues.

Mr Mills: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Well, training is a topic for us, for obvious reasons. I have said this to others and I will say it to you: in almost every single inquiry or investigation or document, the word training comes up.

I would like some help from you practically: what is it that you want within the training package? There is no point saying "more training", because you may get the reply from higher management, "Well, we have given you enough, the budget is huge, and these officers cannot come out to do it".

So in your assistance for me, we really do want some practical advice as to what should go into the training packages to produce the reforms you want, and I really want some help on how it is you are going to make officers attend the training.

Mr Mills: Well, our view has always been that you can take a horse to water but you cannot make them drink, but we would then say that you then have to make it an incentivised thing.

In the past, certainly in my union, we actually tied incremental points to people's training for the trainees, the new intake, and they seemed very happy with that. The reason they were happy with that was because when you pass the course, you get the money. So to the staff, it was a more attractive approach, because it was not you pass the course and the manager says, "You are doing okay so you get the money", it was: pass the course, get the money.

If I had to say where I would target it specifically, it is at the various levels of management promotion. Now at the moment, somebody gets promoted for their first level manager role, they get a training course, and that is it for the rest of their career, literally. Unless they get fast tracked or picked out for special attention; it is almost on a case of, "We have got four vacancies here, who wants to do it?"

Now I know the organisation is trying to be a bit more proactive in targeting individuals for fast tracking and for developmental training, but it is still in its infancy.

I would say, for every promotion, if it be to level one, two, three manager, you should have managerial training tied to that that explains your broader brief in that higher level, so I would like to see it tied to every promotion that somebody gets, or to every change in role, so if they change a role from a band B on borough to a band B in the centre, they would then have a training course to acclimatise them to the needs of that particular role.

Miss Weekes: Now what is higher management saying about this?

Mr Mills: They are just saying they have not got the resources to be able to deliver for every member of staff. The drawback we seem to notice on a regular basis is whenever we start talking about budgetary constraints, training is one of the first things to go out of the window.

In recent discussions around it, obviously HR have pointed out that there are mandatory requirements for police training that they have to fulfil, but that is not true for civil staff, or police staff, I should say.

Miss Weekes: That brings me to the very question I was going to ask: quite often, the only way to get people to do things is that you say, "It is mandatory, it is obligatory, you have to do it". Why is there the distinction then? That with civil staff, it is not mandatory, but with others, it is?

Mr Mills: I think it is because with police officers, there are these requirements to know about PACE and all the legal frameworks they will actually be enforcing, whereas with the police staff, there is no consequence – no legal consequence to them not correctly performing their role. It is not like a member of civil staff could actually be pilloried for doing PACE incorrectly, because they do not get to arrest people and they do not get to have to read them their rights.

I would say there is equally a value to making parts of civil staff training mandatory, because a lot of the consequences are what I would call hidden consequences. It is very difficult to say, "You will have a significant financial impact if you do not get this training"; we know it is true, but with a police officer, it is, "Well, this person is going to take you to court and sue you for wrongful arrest".

That is less apparent with the civil staff, but I think it is equally true that if you looked at it corporately, you could say, "Well, because we did not deliver this training, this financial consequence arose as a result of that", but it is more of a subtle consequence, not a direct one.

Miss Weekes: Well, an obvious argument to me, but it is your evidence that is more important, not my suggestions is the knock-on effect if you have untrained bad managers who have no PR personnel expertise; you get unhappy staff, they leave and they go to ETs, and it costs the Met, but I am sure you have tried that argument.

Mr Mills: Well, again, what you get faced with is, "Show it as a business case", and you cannot do that, because you are being asked, "How many of these cases would actually have been as a result of failing to resolve it informally at a lower level?", and you cannot quantify that.

But I could make a ballpark guess that a significant number of cases that get to ET are almost certainly down to that factor. I agree entirely with you. The cost to the Met, that bad managers do lead to a hell of a lot of effort being put into disciplinaries above and beyond really what was required.

Miss Weekes: What about this additional argument? Again, I am sure it is not new; with your background and expertise, you will have thought of it. It is quite clear to me that the majority of staff, police staff, come from visible ethnic minorities, especially women. Well, does it not matter to higher management how you are treating that sector of people?

Mr Mills: They have started to come round to the idea that it is a big issue. As part of last year's pay negotiations, we have pushed the idea that there should be an equality proofing review of the pay structures; myself and my colleague have been involved in that, and it hopes to report at the end of April.

It has been slow in coming though; I know in my early days, there were significant problems around managers and women in primary care roles. We had significant pushes to get the organisation to be supportive of training around that; issues that arose were initially, when I first started to deal with it – the argument was, well, you should not get promoted above a certain level if you have got primary care. The second issue was: we will only pay for childcare if it is with certain childcare facilities.

All these issues were overcome and the case was made for the organisation to be more supportive. If I were honest about it, I would say that was the old mentality that largely has been brushed away by modern developments.

But it is one of those things where we have been recruiting women and visible ethnic minorities for a considerable period of time, and I would say the only significant improvements we have seen are changes in the last five to six years really.

Miss Weekes: So if we – and I have no idea what our recommendations are going to be, but if one of the recommendations were: you must provide in your budget compulsory training for staff; what do you think higher management is going to say to that?

Mr Mills: I think they would endorse it if they were given the financial resources to do it. I have never got the feeling that they were resisting it for any other reason than resources issues, they just cannot deliver it because they have not got the money.

Miss Weekes: Just one other aspect of training: what should be in the package? We hear about training, we hear it has been delivered, I note in your submissions that it is a one day affair and then that is it.

Personnel skills are very specific. They are often very difficult, and they require personal commitment to do them well. What do you say should be in the training package, and are they being delivered? The training that allows a man or a woman to manage staff in an up-to-date, fair, sensitive fashion.

Mr Mills: I would say current training packages try to cram too much in in too short a space of time. It is almost like, "These are the rules and regulations, now memorise these and make sure you apply them properly". Exactly your point around the issues of, if you like, being people friendly are not a major emphasis; I think the problem related to that is more to do with the culture. The culture is one of, "Well, we cannot be seen to be too friendly, because actually, that creates a wrong impression for the staff, it is an indication of weakness".

Miss Weekes: Well, I know that my colleague has some questions on culture in the Met –

Mr Justham: Could I just make a comment on training? I think one of the areas that we find useful from the trade union side, and this is why we are looking to develop learning reps, is the type of course that the TUC provides, which is not a block five day course, but it is a course that is developed over a number of weeks.

What that allows is for the representative to go to the course, learn some skills, and actually go back to the workplace, to put them into practice and come back the next week to review how that has gone.

What we tend to find is within the Met's training, there is no review day. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to go on a RUNGE course, which was the Met's senior leadership course that they had about two or three years ago, and what that had – it was a four day course, but three months later, there was a review day where you could actually go back and test what you had learnt from the course and how you had put it into practice.

I think that is one of the things within training that we really need to learn, that there needs to be ongoing care of the member of staff, not just you have done your one day, therefore you are a manager, or you have done your two days: you need that ongoing support, and I think that is what we develop for our reps with the TUC courses, which tend to be very popular, and actually very useful for our reps.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much for that. I now want to turn to the topic of employment tribunals; I know you have commented on that, and I think your colleague has. Do you mind if she comes to the desk, please? But I think I am going to need you both. Sorry, I am not getting rid of you. It is simply because you have both commented on the initial legal advice that you get; I have recorded both your comments, and I am interested in it.

First of all yours: when your members come to you with a complaint, or it is a disciplinary issue, before you can actually decide to represent them at an employment tribunal case, you obtain legal advice, and you get what is called a success rate; is that right?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes, it is not something that is done initially. You get more aware of what the actual case is as you start working on it with the member concerned, and when concerns are raised around disability or race or gender or anything else, that is when we send it off for legal advice too.

It is in a short time though, it would be within the first six weeks and everything else, so we can make sure they are protected from every angle.

Miss Weekes: I understand. I want to just ask you how your relationship – or how do you view the legal department of the Met, in relation to the running of employment tribunal cases? We have heard from the director of legal services. I just wonder whether you have any comments that may assist us when we look at that relationship. Does it work, are there improvements that you think could be made?

Ms Yesildalli: My own experience with our own legal department is they have actually been quite difficult and unhelpful.

Miss Weekes: Why is that?

Ms Yesildalli: It just seems that they are all out to protect the Met, and the Met's name. The last thing on their mind is actually, if any of the accusations are true, so it seems – and in the past, with employment tribunals that we have tried to pursue and everything else, it has been – some of them have been lost rather on legal technicalities, rather than the issues that the member has been pursuing.

Miss Weekes: What is your view about resolving disputes, even at a point where one of your members has lodged; what would be your efforts, and how successful have they been? Because everybody knows, of course, allowing a case to go to an ET is not a success for either party, but in your dealings again with the legal department, what is your experience of trying to resolve it, even though a member has lodged?

Ms Yesildalli: Even trying to resolve cases like that, it has been difficult; whilst we have been – quite recently, whilst we have been trying to resolve one particular case – I have to add, it was not me who personally represented this member, it was somebody else. But during that time, another issue had come up where that member was facing discipline from another area, the same member that has lodged the tribunal.

When we were trying to negotiate out of court, if you like, the new inquiry was mentioned in the letter to us with the resolution, it was like, "If you carry on with this tribunal, then we will come down even harder on this issue".

Miss Weekes: You took it to be a subtle threat?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes.

Miss Weekes: This Inquiry is not just about identifying the problems, it is about identifying what you see to be the solutions. Well, how can your relationship with the legal department be improved so they do not think it is about protecting the Met's name, and you can both try to resolve?

Ms Yesildalli: I do not know, sometimes I think it would be good if we had somewhere in between, where after cases have ended, or where we have sought resolution and everything else, is from the issues that have arisen to delay such resolution and everything else, if we could have some kind of a forum where we met to discuss things like that.

Miss Weekes: So built into the system at the moment, you do not think there is a stage or a step that you can say, "Okay, my member has lodged, and I see your response, but can we take some time out and chat?"

Ms Yesildalli: No, there is not a system.

Miss Weekes: There is not that step built in?

Ms Yesildalli: No.

Miss Weekes: Well, have you tried it?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes, we have tried it with senior personnel managers, and we have always – it has always just been stuck with senior personnel managers.

Miss Weekes: Because, of course, you can decide to resolve a dispute at any stage, as long as you have not got your date for the tribunal and you are not actually there. So at the moment, there is not that facility?

Ms Yesildalli: No, not with the legal department.

Miss Weekes: Do you want to add anything to that?

Mr Mills: All I was going to add is the one time where I dealt with a case where we tried to do that informal step, it was almost seen as, "They have not got a case, so we can ignore it". It was perceived again as a weakness on our part to make that approach. To try and resolve it informally was, "Well, their legal case must be telling them they are not going to win it".

So I think that is what has hamstrung that approach, is that both sides almost view it that if there is an approach that suggests some kind of compromise discussion; it is a sign of weakness from that party.

Miss Weekes: Well, let me put what might be the response from management – this is just a theory, it may be completely wrong. Management may say, "Well, actually, what really happens is that your members are quite stubborn, and they are the ones that want the tribunal case, they want compensation, they want money"; is that a possible fair comment that you might get from management?

Ms Yesildalli: Management might come back and say that, but what we find with the members that are actually pursuing tribunals – they are so stressed by it all and actually suffering that it is not stubborn that comes out straight away, it is just that frustration of the whole process.

Miss Weekes: Well, what is your general view? Again, we really want some evidence here: what is your general view about why the majority of people are lodging employment tribunal claims? Is it because they have to?

Ms Yesildalli: I think it is because they want management to take them more seriously than if they were to just stick to the internal procedures, they want that extra protection, because they do not trust management to deal with it straight away, effectively, and they see that as a protection.

Miss Weekes: Well, have you told management this?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes.

Miss Weekes: What is the response?

Ms Yesildalli: It is just – it is negative. It is that you cannot stop individuals putting in employment tribunals.

Miss Weekes: What, they have a right?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Now what is the trend that you both see coming out of employment tribunal claims? I put this question to the Federation yesterday, and I think it is an important one if you can help us.

It is helpful, is it not, to identify trends because then you can work out what is going on with the workforce; why are people going to employment tribunals, what is the recurring issue on race and gender? I have picked those two because that is what police officers are allowed to lodge for. Yours for staff is much wider, so I really want from you: what is the trend? Why are staff going to employment tribunals?

Mr Mills: I think it is exactly what my colleague identified partly in her earlier answer, it is the perception that they will only get an independent hearing at a tribunal.

It is not about money, we make it very clear to them at the outset that if they are looking for retirement for life, that is not going to happen. I make it clear to all the cases I deal with that that is not likely to happen.

It is just that they give up on the internal process, and they actually go through it almost as a matter of rote.

The other issue for us is that people perceive that it is the Met just – if they do not lodge for a tribunal, they run out of time, and this was definitely a trend in recent years where it was perceived – I think I even had a comment from one chair of a tribunal, when he knew I was from the Met Police, he said, "They do seem to take a lot of time to resolve their cases, and they always seem to come to tribunal", and he asked me if that was why we had to lodge, and more or less it was.

It was one of those things where you know it is going to take longer than the time limits that are allowed before you can get a resolution, so it is almost as a safeguard that you have to lodge for tribunal, and once you do that, they get very polarised in their approach, it is very much, "Well, now you have made it formal, we cannot talk to you any more". So I would certainly say, if they had more belief in an internal process or in an independent internal process, you probably would not get half the cases you get now.

Miss Weekes: Yes. Do you have anything to add to that?

Ms Yesildalli: No.

Miss Weekes: What topics repeatedly come up in the ET1s?

Ms Yesildalli: I would say from my own handlings and everything, it is mainly from women, the topics that come up. It is usually about flexibility and working arrangements, term time working, and changing their hours from full-time contracts to either part-time or part hours.

Miss Weekes: Right, well, you help us; what is the difficulty that management have with women changing from full-time hours to part-time under the part time regulations?

Ms Yesildalli: The example I will give is from the PCSOs, the police community support officers. They have got the shifts that they work and everything else. The way that it has been managed in some instances is where everyone is meant to fit around the shift, and the majority of the other workers, rather than management be able to look at your hours and change them to accommodate you. It is identifying individuality within the teams.

Miss Weekes: Well, what has been your suggestion to management for change?

Ms Yesildalli: Well, most of the time it is a training curve again, because it is the unions that send to those local managers what the guidelines are and what the law is and everything else. They look through them and then after time, they do actually come round and –

Miss Weekes: But it takes time?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes.

Miss Weekes: So what would you say the state of the improvement is in relation to women wanting to legitimately change their hours of work? Is it good, generally, I mean, are we seeing an improvement from management on that?

Ms Yesildalli: No, because there is nothing actually published, like from management. If you were to phone up the HR directorate and ask for – even on the website or anything else, it is very basic, it is not in any detail whatsoever.

Of course, that is what local managers are accessing too, the website, for information, if they cannot get hold of experts in this field. So I think there needs to be a lot more information published and printed for everybody to use.

Miss Weekes: I would like to just turn to the issue of race discrimination cases which are being lodged at the employment tribunals. Again, what is the trend that you both see, what is the reason that visible ethnic minorities go to employment tribunals?

Ms Yesildalli: I think again it is what I said earlier, not having the confidence in the Met, in the system in the Met, for them to be able to deal with it, and for that extra protection?

Miss Weekes: Yes. Any particular topics that you see recurring? I know that race discrimination is a broad topic, but on the ET1s often one can see a particular trend?

Ms Yesildalli: No, I could not just identify one.

Mr Mills: I would say that the ones that are coming up for me is opportunity; they tend to feel that developmental opportunities and access to promotion – the cases I have dealt with, luckily, I think, we have managed to persuade local management that there are needs to address, so in recent years, I have not had to go to ETs with them, but certainly, the most consistent feature was, "I am not getting the same opportunity to be moved to developmental sites, I am not getting considered for promotion in the same way as everybody else", those seem to be the key factors.

Miss Weekes: As a public inquiry, if we said to you: where do you get this evidence? The fact that somebody puts it in an ET1 does not necessarily mean it is based upon solid ground. It could be, but it may not be. Where do we look for this evidence, that there is disparity between the treatment of a black and a white officer when it comes to opportunities and promotion?

Mr Mills: The problem that we are all going to have is that the statistics to evidence it either way just are not available at the moment. You tend to find, and I certainly find this with representing colleagues like that, once you try to pursue it too vigorously, they become concerned about their profile in the organisation, and the negative associations with that profile.

In the past, I have had cases where I have had to literally pursue it against the wishes of the individual, because their perception was that they would be incorrectly perceived as using the race card, to put it bluntly. Now I did pursue a case, but to try and statistically prove that that was a problem would be very difficult; it was just my perception from him telling me the details of his circumstances, it just struck me that I had explored all the possible options it could have been, and it just left me with the assumption that it was racially based.

But he did not want to draw that conclusion, because it would have been – he got on very well with his local colleagues, and he just could not perceive that that would be an underlying issue.

Miss Weekes: You must be aware, and I put this question to others – I do not know what extent it is, but white officers have lodged at employment tribunals, claiming race discrimination and using a black officer staff as a comparator; have you come across that?

Mr Mills: I would not say I have had anything go to that level. I did have a white colleague feel that the issues around training for white officers were being ignored, but he made it abundantly clear that he was not making that comparison; he was saying it was being ignored for everybody, but the approach seemed to be, "Well, we will only concentrate on the training for visible ethnic minorities", and his view was, "Well, let us not isolate people in this fashion, let us accept it is bad for everybody".

Miss Weekes: Do you both consider that the agenda for race and diversity and the position that race issues have within diversity, correctly held, has now swamped the issue on gender? Do your staff feel that?

Mr Mills: Yes, if you said, do my members feel that is the way it is, then certainly, I think they do. I think they are a bit mistaken about that, because my perception is that as I illustrated earlier, with the equality proofing review, the Met is accepting that for gender, it is still a very big issue.

So I do not think it has got swamped strategically for the Met, I just think the perception at grass roots level is that it is. But I think that is an exaggerated perception.

Miss Weekes: Just one final point, if I may: you make the comment in your written submissions that there is a bit of a difficulty often with the roles and responsibilities of staff associations and your roles as union reps. You talked about the protocol that is not yet in place; is that right?

Mr Mills: That is correct.

Miss Weekes: We are going to hear, for example, from the Black Police Association this afternoon, so it will be helpful if you could tell us how you would like that relationship to be run, with your position as representative elected reps, and those of the staff associations.

Ms Yesildalli: We have in the past worked quite closely, when representing members, with individual members of the staff associations, but what we find with the trade unions is that when we have got our own union members that we are representing, we sometimes get into more difficulty, because they are also being advised by the staff associations, and are coming back and obviously questioning our advice, and it does actually strain relations.

When we get legal advice, and the legal advice is questioned, I am not qualified to question someone else's actual legal advice, but this is what we seem to get happening with the staff associations, and certain members of the staff associations.

So from that, relations are strained. The other thing is, it is the way that management are managing the whole process with the staff associations; it is definitely in PCS, we feel that, but they are putting more resources into the staff associations, as an excuse not to resource the trade unions. Management have brought in devolvement, but they have not devolved the partnership agreement as far as trade union reps, workplace reps, and everything else.

For the 6,000 members I have in my union in the Met Police, we have got six people on full facilities. So there is that strain there too, where one set of associations, if you like, are being resourced to the max, and the trade unions are not. It is something that we are actually pursuing.

Miss Weekes: You are pursuing that?

Ms Yesildalli: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Thank you both very much.

Sir William Morris: Thank you both. I will in a minute pass you over to Sir Anthony Burden for his questions, but just before we move on, I do not want to lose my thoughts about a couple of points, just for clarification.

Further questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: First of all, I might have misheard on the question of training, but I thought it was said earlier on that there is a provision for two days' training in the Met; did I hear that? I think it was Mr Justham who said that there was provision for two days' training.

Mr Justham: Yes, as part of the initiative I mentioned about the police staff training board, it is the intention that all police staff should receive two days' training. But there is no specification about what that training may be.

Sir William Morris: Yes, of course. Will that go universally right across the organisation?

Mr Justham: Yes, it is hoped that that will be for all police staff.

Sir William Morris: So it will become, if you like, a collective agreement on training, that everyone has maximum of two days' training annually across the board?

Mr Justham: Yes.

Sir William Morris: Fine.

Mr Justham: We do have some concerns about some of the caveats that management are putting around certain elements of training, which are tying staff to certain roles for a period of time because they have had specific training, and we are trying to get guarantees around job specific training not counting towards that.

Sir William Morris: I recognise that there is bound to be a conversation around the details, but I am just trying to declare that it is an accepted principle which will form part of a collective agreement.

Mr Justham: Yes.

Sir William Morris: Fine, okay. The other point that I wanted to just be clear about – it was not sort of explored in any depth, but on this question of industrial tribunal cases, I recognise and understand that once the ET1 has been lodged and the preliminary work and all that is done, my understanding is it goes outside the organisation to the legal office or whatever – I am assuming that is the trade union's solicitors, right – for a success rate assessment. Are you aware of the criteria that is used to make that assessment?

Ms Yesildalli: Not in any detail, but what we are doing as a union is actually, when it comes to dealing with race cases especially, is seeking to actually get the percentage lifted, so that whereas in –

Sir William Morris: What is

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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 R Justham, Mr R Mills, Mr K O’Gallagher and Ms S Yesildalli of the Metropolitan Police Trades Unions, on 1 April 2004. Sections available here: Transcript of public session: Mr Robert Justham, Ms Sevi Yesildalli and Mr Russell Mills of the Metropolitan Police Trades Unions Questions by Sir William Morris Questions by Miss Weekes Further questions by Sir William Morris Questions by Sir Anthony Burden Further questions by Sir William Morris Alternative versions This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering. Content Transcript of public session: Mr Robert Justham, Ms Sevi Yesildalli and Mr Russell Mills of the Metropolitan Police Trades Unions Thursday, 1 April 2004 10.30 am Sir William Morris: Good morning, everyone. Could I first of all say a very warm and cordial welcome to you, Mr Justham, and indeed to your colleagues. Let me say that we want to start by thanking you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry to give evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission, which we found extremely helpful. I do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, any process of this nature may seem somewhat of a daunting task, so I thought it would be helpful if I set out briefly how we propose to conduct the hearing this morning. But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel: first, on my right, is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the police service; and on my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister who sits as a recorder, and also as a part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry. Mr Justham, 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. 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, by character or nature, adversarial. We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendations for further good practice within the MPS, rather than concentrate on making criticisms of the organisation or the individuals employed by it. To help us in our task, we are keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but what is right with it; more importantly, we are very keen to hear what needs to be done to put things right, if we do establish that not everything is right. Let me say for the record that a transcript is being taken, so that we have a proper record of the evidence given by our witnesses, and this will be posted on our website later today. At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you and your colleagues, followed by, first, Miss Weekes, and followed next 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 for a brief closing comment if you wish. You have helpfully provided us with a written submission, and you have also indicated areas around which we will seek to explore some questions with you. In your submission, you have set out a whole range of information by way of headings. Just for the record, I will highlight as many as is necessary. Firstly, a description of the Metropolitan trade unions, you have structured how you operate; police staff and their status within the Metropolitan Police Service; your consulting and negotiating process; and the Metropolitan Police Service culture. You have also talked about diversity within the Met, and you have talked about the MPS' policies, practices and procedures, as well as training provisions and the trade union and staff support association; and finally, you have indicated comments regarding the Virdi Inquiry recommendations. We naturally want to ask you questions about some of those issues and the material you have submitted, and we find those materials of extreme interest. But before I move on to the questions, perhaps for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder whether you would mind formally introducing yourself and your colleagues to the Inquiry. Mr Justham: Good morning, and thank you, Sir William, for that introductory remark. My name is Robert Justham. Today is my first day as Secretary of the MET-TUS side, having spent seven years as the deputy secretary, so it is quite an important day for myself as well. The MET-TUS side is what you would know from the civil service as the trade union side. We act as a co-ordinating committee on areas of mutual concern for the four unions within the Metropolitan Police. I am accompanied at this Inquiry this morning by two of my colleagues from the constituent unions, Ms Yesildalli, who is from the Public and Commercial Services Union, and is the president of the Metropolitan Police group, as well as being on the national executive committee of that union. The PCSU is the largest union within the Metropolitan Police, and represents generalists but also some specialists, like CAD operators, and jailers and station reception operators. My other colleague is Russell Mills from Prospect Union, who represents specialist grades, for instance photographers, SOCOs, fingerprint specialists; so they have a specialist representation there. That is the introduction. Sir William Morris: Thank you, we are grateful to all of you. Questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: Let me start with your submission at paragraph 5, I think it is, dealing with negotiation and consultation processes, and I see that in the year 2001, the joint trade unions signed a partnership agreement with the Metropolitan Police Service. That said, I note from the commentary which follows the heading of that particular paragraph that there seems to be some reservations about the way the agreement is working in practice. But just to establish the agreement in context, perhaps you could tell me who from the trade union sides were the signatures, who signed the agreement? Mr Justham: It was the full-time officers for each of the constituent unions at the time, so that would have been from PCS, IPMS, as it was at the time of starting, AEWU and the FDA. AEWU, now Amicus, of course. Sir William Morris: Was the agreement signed by, if you like, the national officials – Mr Justham: Yes, it was the national full-time officers. Sir William Morris: Can I ask whether they have been made aware of the concerns that you are experiencing locally in terms of its interpretation and implementation? Mr Justham: Yes, we have regular quarterly meetings of MET-TUS, and the full-time officers sit on that committee. Sir William Morris: That is fine. Just in your own words, apart from reading what is written here, just sort of getting between the lines, so to speak, can you tell us how the agreement is actually operating on the ground? I read the point that consultation only takes place when the issue is not contentious, and I also read that a number of issues around the working time directive and Fairness at Work – unilateral implementation has taken place without agreement. I am just sort of wanting to understand the general culture as to how this agreement is operating at a workplace level. Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that centrally, as we say in our submission, we have quite good access to management board and senior members of the management team. And it would also be fair to say that because we are included on a number of steering groups and project boards, we are kept aware of some of the more strategic issues in the organisation that tend to be formally set up, with project boards and management boards. Where we tend to find the problem is at local BOCU level, and it is very patchy across the organisation from borough to borough. Some boroughs where we have a good relationship between the lead representative and the borough commander and his personnel managers. In other boroughs, we do not necessarily have that good relationship, and therefore, where the borough commander is positive in consultation and actually involves the lead representative on their senior management team, and invites them to attend meetings for certain parts of that meeting, we tend to find that there is quite a good relationship. But in other boroughs, the borough commander may not even know who the lead representative is and may not meet with them regularly. We find we have problems there. Sir William Morris: Let me just try and understand how the structure works. Take consultation: do you have regular diaried meetings for your consultative meetings, like third Thursday of every quarter or something like that, or is it ad hoc? Mr Justham: No, as I said, centrally, there is quite a good structure. We meet on an informal basis with management board once a month, and two of those meetings during the year are formally minuted meetings, and those minutes are circulated in the form of a police notice. Also to supplement that, we again have monthly meetings informally with the ACHR or his deputy, as a sort of a pre-meet for those management board meetings, because the majority of our concerns, if we are truthful, are around human resources and personnel policies. Consequently, he has agreed to meet us on a monthly basis, so those concerns can be dealt with before a formal management board meeting. But if they are not dealt with in those meetings, we have the right to take that forward to management board. Also we have a number of consultative meetings and we are involved in project boards around a number of specific policy implementations, and so centrally and formally, we are quite well served. Some of the problems we do find with being formally involved in project boards is obviously we only make up one member of a project board or a steering group, and consequently, sometimes our concerns on behalf of staff can be lost in the committee structure, because obviously the bulk of the staff or the representatives on that committee are actually members of management, and are speaking on behalf of their units, whereas our one representative is hopefully representing the views of staff, but it is not so easy for them to actually come out with forthright comments at those committees. Of course, they always have to refer to the trade unions and membership below them. Sir William Morris: Am I right in assuming that you have separated out your terms and conditions negotiations from the routine of consultation? Because they are naturally a different process, but am I right in that, that they have been separated out and dealt with differently? Mr Justham: Yes, to a greater extent – we do have also a twice-yearly personnel consultative meeting where those sort of issues around the terms and conditions are discussed. Pay and associated terms and conditions are also discussed separately by the individual trade unions as individual sovereign bodies who come together separately from the MET-TUS structure to discuss pay and terms and conditions related to pay. Sir William Morris: Okay. My colleagues and I are quite intrigued as we look at the documentation that has been submitted to us and read and try to understand, and perhaps you can help us here. We have the unions which are represented here this morning, led by your good self and Ms Yesildalli, and we also met with the other long established trade union yesterday, the Federation, which represents uniformed officers. But from the evidence that we have been privileged to read so far, we see that there are 14 support groups within the Metropolitan Police Service. What we would like you to share with us is: if we have established trade unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress for the staff, and we have got a Police Federation which is long established, statutorily constituted, why do we need support groups at all; and in any event, why do we need 14? Can you help us on that? Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that we have some concerns around staff support associations and their role in the organisation. Whilst we support the fact that they should exist, and they are helpful in representing certain areas of concern, we do have concerns around the fact that it is becoming harder to get a clear line of communication with management around consultation. At the moment, we are trying to obtain a protocol between us and the staff associations to actually set out where each of us has a responsibility, because whilst staff associations may have some interests around terms and conditions, we do not see their role as negotiating terms and conditions, that is a role for the trade unions, and also around personal representation of members in personal cases. We have found some conflicts around those sort of issues, and I am sure later on my colleagues will be able to comment on their specific experiences around that, because those issues are really dealt with by the constituent trade unions. So we have actually been trying to address these concerns by trying to get the protocol agreed with the staff associations to actually set out clearly what each of our responsibilities are within the organisation. Up until now, it is only the Disabled Staff Association that has actually come back to us and agreed on the protocols. Sir William Morris: I am sure that as our conversation develops, my colleagues will want to pick that point up and perhaps explore further, but just one final question from me on that point: do I assume that members of the police staff – I know where the Federation, the uniformed officers stand on the thing – but do I assume that members of the civilian staff, the police staff that you represent, some of those trade union members are also members of support groups, associations as well? Mr Justham: Yes, they can be. I believe it depends on the particular staff support association, but I believe that – Sir William Morris: Some of them are. Mr Justham: If not all of them, the majority allow police staff to be members. Sir William Morris: That is fine, thank you. If I can move on now, I would be interested in hearing from you about the experience of police staff, in particular experience around diversity issues. Can you tell us whether the Metropolitan Police Service diversity policy is delivering the objectives for staff representation within the group that you and your colleagues represent? Mr Justham: We have slight concerns about whether it is delivering what it intends to do. The Met have invested a lot of time and opportunity costs in diversity within the organisation, and occasionally, you can get the impression that perhaps too much time is spent on it, because you are never totally sure what committee you are actually attending, and what the actual objectives of those committees are, and we do spend a lot of our time sitting on various steering groups around diversity and race relations issues. But in general, we feel that there is still an impression within the organisation, particularly amongst police staff, that the Met is not delivering totally on its commitment to diversity. Sir William Morris: Have they been challenged on failure to implement in respect of the diversity provisions? Mr Justham: We challenge regularly at any meeting we attend, around those issues. Sir William Morris: And when these issues are raised with the management, do you see an improvement, continuous, or is it just sort of responsive and then falls back to the old ways? How is that manifesting itself? Mr Justham: I think in general, management are very receptive to our points, and they do listen, and we do notice change in the organisation. Certainly in the five or six years that I have been involved in trade unions formally within the Metropolitan Police, we have noticed a great change in the organisation, and it is improving, although obviously we do not feel that it is improving quite enough. Sir William Morris: I wonder if I could ask you to take a look at paragraphs 7.2 and 7.3 of your submission. It is on screen, if the technology works, you should have it up before you. You have indicated there that the minority ethnic police staff are concentrated in the lower grades, have lower retention levels, and they take longer to progress. You also say that they also experience overt racist behaviour. Can you give us some examples of the racist behaviour being experienced by ethnic minority police staff, and say what steps the trade unions that you represent are taking to stamp out this racist behaviour towards ethnic minority members of your organisations? Mr Justham: Well, I think it is probably best if I refer to the case study that we provided within our submission, and also, I am aware that you have received additional information on that case study. It was a case study from a station reception officer who was involved in receiving – signing for a producer when a police officer came in to register a stolen vehicle, and also to note his insurance papers. The member of police staff noted the date on the papers, but did not make cognisance of the time of the insurance papers being issued, so consequently, it turned out later that the insurance papers had been timed after the incident that was complained about. One of the problems we perceived in this was assumptions were made about the two individuals involved in this case, around their particular race, and consequently, the Met police appeared to act heavy handedly in dealing with this issue, because it made assumptions purely because of the race of the two individuals involved. And consequently, we are trying to raise these issues in negotiations later on; we raise them at the time we have personal cases like this, and point out in the individual cases that these things are going on, and we also try and raise these and use these as illustrative issues when we meet with the AC on a regular basis, to try and get things changed, and to try and get some consistency within the organisation. Because what we tend to find is there is an inconsistency around personnel issues within the organisation, because of the fact that it is a decentralised organisation now. Sir William Morris: Okay, thank you. One of the issues that is exercising our minds, and it is because it falls within our terms of reference in relation to workplace matters, is employment tribunals, both in terms of quantitative evaluation and some of the issues around time delays, and issues such as that. Can you give us examples of cases where the Met trade unions that you represent have supported ethnic minority members at employment tribunals on grounds of discrimination? Mr Justham: I think if I can ask one of my colleagues to answer this question? As I said earlier in my submission, the actual constituent trade unions deal with discipline cases and employment tribunals, and it is not something I feel able to answer. Sir William Morris: Yes, of course. Ms Yesildalli: Thank you. With the race cases at employment tribunals, a lot of the time what we find is the individual reps dealing with such personal cases are quite often unfacilitated by management when it comes to pursuing the case and everything else. Most of them, we find that we can actually resolve within the Met, without actually going to tribunal. The difficulty we have throughout the trade union itself, especially with PCS, is that it has to have a success rate. When we send our cases off for legal advice and everything else, before we can submit the tribunal, it comes back with the success rate attached to it, and quite often we find that actually we cannot represent them at tribunal. Sir William Morris: I am sure my colleagues will want to explore the criteria for determining the viability or success rate going forward, but I will not trouble you with that at the moment, but as I have said, I am sure that my colleagues will want to hear a little bit more about it, and in particular, how the relationship is handled internally before you get out to the tribunals. You have made some observations about training within the service, and you refer to the Metropolitan Police Service training budget as somewhere in the region – in excess of £86 million. Could I ask: how does the training budget get divided between officers on the one hand and staff training on the others? In short, do you think you are getting a fair deal in terms of the division for this group of employees of the MPS? Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that our position is we do not feel the police staff are getting a fair deal. Whilst we recognise that the police service is obviously primarily about policing London, we do feel that police staff provide a vital support – and in a growing number of cases now, actual frontline staff to that, therefore we do feel that the budgets are not being fairly divided. It would be fair to say that the Met have noted our concerns around training, and they have now set up a police staff training board which we have representation on. It is quite early days within that process, and for instance, we are looking to see how much the Met police will support some of our initiatives, like for instance learning representatives within the workplace. I think from that point of view, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating: to see whether they actually do support us on those issues and whether they can be successful and whether there is an improvement around that. We also have concerns around the level of management training within the organisation, because we – whilst the organisation has devolved a large amount of management responsibility to the lowest level that it can within the organisation, we are not entirely convinced that it has actually supported that move of responsibility down by giving the appropriate training to staff. Certainly the amount of training that police staff receive has gone down a great deal since I joined the organisation, although again, we do have a commitment from management that each member of police staff will receive at least two days' training a year, and that is a start, but obviously, we will be looking to actually put pressure on management with our involvement in the police staff training board to actually try and improve things. Sir William Morris: Thank you for that, you have answered one of my other questions, so I will move on. I want to move on to the aspect of what has been described as the culture within the Metropolitan Police Service, and take you to your submission at paragraph 6.3. Again, it is on the screen, you should see it as it is written. You refer there to the Metropolitan Police Service culture being, and I quote, based on legalistic values. Could I invite you to expand on the statement "based on legalistic values"? Mr Justham: I think our experience, particularly in the way the Metropolitan Police deal with personal cases and discipline, is that they are very quick to move to the formal – I am sure my colleagues can give you examples of where what would appear to be minor incidents of discipline or inefficiency are actually dealt with in a way we would call heavy handed by moving straight into requiring taped interviews, requiring individuals to be there to take notes and minutes, whereas we would see that a lot of these issues could actually be dealt with informally, as an informal management action at the earliest stage. However, it tends to be the culture of the Met that they move to requiring taped interviews at a very early stage in a number of cases, which tends to raise the stakes when it comes to actually dealing with the individuals. Sir William Morris: Let me just be clear in my mind here, because whilst the methodology of approach that you have just described has been offered to us in respect of the uniform officers, am I to understand that that same legalistic approach in terms of moving quickly to a formalised position is also true in the relationship with the civilian staff? Mr Justham: It is our experience that in a number of cases, it is. One of the areas that we pointed out in our submission around training is that we feel that not enough training is given to police officers, in the differences between police staff and police officers when it comes to terms and conditions, and in the way of dealing with discipline cases. So consequently, in a number of situations now, a police officer will be the immediate line manager of a member of police staff, or possibly the second line manager, and consequently, they tend to default to their experiences of the police discipline. We feel that this is particularly the case in areas like PCSOs, who have been recruited without a police staff management structure, who are actually being managed directly by police officers, in the majority of cases, and I am not sure whether any of my colleagues can actually give you formal examples of these instances where they have happened. Mr Mills: If I could offer a comment of the examples I have encountered, when Mr Justham refers to legalistic processes, it tends to be used against us. I have actually had instances where I had a case and we tried to resolve it informally, and then we were presented with a legal opinion that said we had run out of time for a tribunal. So that was almost used as a reason for us to comply with the way that the personnel manager wanted to go, rather than to explore other avenues. It was almost a case of, "Well, you have got to comply now because you have run out of time, and our legal advice is this". That seems to be more prevalent in what I would call the more difficult cases; if you are dealing with a case where they think there are significant – maybe compensation or financial issues, they go to legal advice without prior warning to that effect, and the first we know of it is when a set of photocopies comes across the table that effectively says, "Well, our legal advice is you have not got a case". Sir William Morris: Yes, I see. How do you actually respond? Do you get your own legal advice, or how does the trade union respond to that situation? Mr Mills: Exactly as you have anticipated. It leaves us with no choice but to go to our own legal advisors, and then you get the contrary opinion. You only get the bit of legal advice that they feel balances their case. When you ask for the full copies, they are not forthcoming. Sir William Morris: So it becomes a battle with the absent lawyers. Mr Mills: Yes, you have to up the ante, and it does not give us the flexibility we would like. Sir William Morris: Okay. You have used the phrase "the difference between the two", making reference to civilian staff and indeed officers; that takes me to the next area I just want to explore with you. We had Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the HM Inspector, giving evidence earlier on in the Inquiry, and he talked to us about a process of what he called increasing civilianisation, that is to say civilian and uniform staff working closer together; and, if you like, the areas, the demarcation line, is being blurred quite significantly. If I recall correctly, I think he suggested to us that there is some consideration, a working party or a consultative document was emanating from the Home Office on this phase of future development. I wonder if you recognise the phrase "civilianisation", and if you do, what are the long term implications for your members and for the police service as you see it? Mr Justham: We do recognise the word "civilianisation", and in fact we have met, as the Met trade union side, with the HMI inspectors around the civilianisation thematic. I am also aware that I have been involved in a workshop that was organised by Unison with the HMI to actually bottom out some of the concerns around civilianisation. Our basic attitude could probably be best summed up by the statement that we feel that any job within the Metropolitan Police that does not involve the use of police officer powers should be carried out by a member of police staff. We feel that the process is hampered to a certain extent by the political imperative on police officer numbers, which has meant that a police officer, whatever role they are carrying out within the organisation, is a police officer, and consequently shows up on police officer numbers, whether or not they are actually out patrolling and doing jobs that the public would see as roles carried out by police officers, or whether they are in the office carrying out a job that we would see as a police staff job. And consequently, we feel that the debate needs to go on to be a bit more sophisticated than just talking about police officer numbers, but actually looking at the roles that police officers are carrying out. There was a review into civilianisation carried out on behalf of the MPA which had noted a number of roles that could be considered for civilianisation, because of the nature of them, and the Met were looking to actually carry out the recommendations of that report. However, there have been some concerns from our side that the Met are not totally committed to that, and are actually reviewing what they are looking at civilianisation. So we are changing from actually changing current jobs from being done by a police officer to being done by a member of police staff, but they are also starting to include new roles that are being identified that may in previous times have been carried out by a police officer, but now they are actually looking to consider using police staff to carry them out. An example of that is the civilian detention officers, which might have been a role that would have been carried out by a police officer in past times, but actually, it is a new role that they have considered as a police staff role. So there are areas of positive as well as what we would see as negative; of course, we still feel there are too many uniformed police officers in the office doing what we would call back room functions, when they should be out patrolling and carrying out policing functions. Sir William Morris: Yes. Can you see this sort of continuous evolvement of technology significantly shifting the balance between the two groups? I mean, can you see the police officer out on the beat with his palm-held computer, accessing all sort of information which normally would have come through a different route? Mr Justham: Yes, well, one of my roles as deputy secretary was consultation around C3I/Metcall, and there are lots of initiatives around mobile data terminals and that sort of thing which in the future could increase that. And also one of the advantages of C3I/Metcall is the fact they are looking to civilianise more of the roles of CAD operators. It gives them a better flexibility to actually make more of those roles police staff roles. The hope and the vision is to actually make all of those roles police staff roles within the command and control system, so there are positives around there. Though there is concerns again around the Disability Discrimination Act, and how much that will impact on the number of police officers carrying out desk jobs, and we are not totally convinced that the Met have quite embraced that yet, are aware of the consequences that might bring. Sir William Morris: Has there been any consultation between the organisation that you represent, the trade unions here, and the Federation on this issue of civilianisation? Have you been having discussions with your colleagues in the Fed? Mr Justham: We tend not to have formal relationships with the Federation in that way, although we both sit on the civilianisation project board. We tend to find that we come from different directions around civilianisation. There is a concern that the Federation have not necessarily been open to civilianisation in the past, whereas we see that when it has happened, it has normally been of benefit to the organisation. An example of that is station reception officers. When they were initially brought into the organisation, there was a bit of scepticism about how successful they would be, but I think our view is that they have proved over the years that actually having someone dedicated to doing station reception officer work has actually improved the service that they give to the public, whereas previously, it was whichever police officer happened to be allocated to that job during the day. So we feel there are examples where civilianisation has improved the service, and that can be demonstrated. Sir William Morris: Yes, good. Can I move on to that area of your submission which talks about the issue of misconduct in relation to police staff? We will have it up, as you can see, on the screen before you. You have indicated there that there has been a fair amount of devolution of responsibility down to local level, but it is true to say that you are highlighting the variability of the knowledge base of the different line managers, and the result of that, as you see it, and I quote, is haphazard and inconsistent application of the disciplinary procedure; your words. Can I ask: what proposals do the Met trade unions have in place for putting right what you have described as haphazard and inconsistent application of the disciplinary procedure? Mr Justham: I think it would be fair to say that what we would like to see is a return to a certain amount of the more serious disciplines being dealt with centrally, as was the case before 1997. We feel that because misconduct has been devolved to a lower level, and therefore the number of serious misconduct cases that an individual line manager may carry out during their career is not that great – in fact, some line managers may not have to be involved in anything like that at any time. When issues do come up, the way they are dealt with is not necessarily the way we would want to see them dealt with, so we would like to see a return to the central discipline process that existed before 1997. Sir William Morris: It is obviously a matter for concern for you and your colleagues, but let me ask: the haphazardness and the inconsistent application, has it got any proportionate implications? To put it bluntly, does this inconsistent and haphazard implementation of the disciplinary procedure, as a result of lack of knowledge, say, by local managers – does it impact negatively on ethnic minority staff to a higher degree than it does on other staff? Mr Justham: I think the problem we have around that is because, as we put in our submission, the ethnic minority staff are better represented amongst police staff, it can be quite hard to define whether the problem is around ethnic minority staff or whether it is around police staff in general. Sir William Morris: Okay. Mr Justham: I do not know whether one of my colleagues would have a further comment on that, because as I said, they deal mainly with the cases. Mr Mills: I think the only opinion I would offer on that is it becomes very difficult with this devolved system to get statistics that could illustrate either way. We encountered a very similar problem around annual appraisals, where we asked for statistics to see if there were trends, and the emerging findings started to indicate to us that it was a problem, that there was this ethnicity bias. Certainly we would view it that we would not be at all surprised if that emerged around disciplines and misconducts, and we have been asking exactly that question. As Mr Justham quite rightly said, we have been pushing for more monitoring from the centre to establish if we can see these trends, and at the moment, that is not as ideal as we would like. Sir William Morris: My question was induced by the fact that we have heard evidence that local managers who manage police officers are reluctant to carry out the normal functions of – managerial functions of dealing with discipline, on the basis that they are, if you like, fearful of being charged with discrimination. So instead of being managed efficiently, it has been suggested they are being managed by retreat, referring the matter upwards rather than dealing with it, and that bears out the legalistic approach which we have explored earlier. I wondered in my mind, and that is what induced my question, bearing in mind what you have talked about, inconsistency and haphazardness, whether there was any manifestation of the same principles of management not managing, or where they are managed due to the lack of their own skills and training, there was a negative impact on certain groups within the workforce. But you have given an answer which I am satisfied with. Mr Justham: I think it would also be fair that that is our experience – although we could not give you any hard evidence on that. One of the problems also I think we have established is that management skills, personnel skills, are not necessarily one of the pre-emptives of promoting individuals in the current organisation. Recently, police staff have moved from a grade based system to having a band system, in which various jobs – you are actually promoted into the job, and that job has specific guidelines. So consequently, we do not feel that management skills are – or enough respect is paid to management skills in the promotional process. So consequently, you are promoting someone who is good at a job, but then who happens to pick up management skills later on – or you hope that they will – but without giving them the proper support to do that. Sir William Morris: I have just one last question to you, it is by way of an invitation to you, but let me preface the invitation by saying this: during my introduction, I said that we were not just interested in hearing what is wrong with the meetings service, we also are interested in hearing what is right with it, but most importantly, we want to hear from our witnesses what needs to be done to make it better in those terms. Against that background, it has been suggested to us that our task is an unenviable one; that may be right, it may be wrong. Be that as it may, we have to produce a report which will affect the people that you represent, your members, in the police service, as police service staff. As senior representatives of that group of employees, you will be aware of the problems, the highs, the lows, the good, the bad, and you are experts in that field. We have to write a report, if we were to invite you to write one chapter of our report, with your knowledge, what would you say? Mr Justham: I think I would look at the relationship between police staff and police officers, and try and work towards having one workforce, and move away from the differentiation between the two, because we can see from the number of different roles that police staff are taking up now, they are actually becoming more operational and more placed in the frontline, but we do not feel they are necessarily getting the full support that the police officer would get in those situations. So I think it would be – our comments around the one organisation, trying to have a commonality around that. Sir William Morris: Utopia! Mr Justham: That is my own personal view; I am not sure about saying that without referring to my colleagues. Sir William Morris: I am happy for them to offer a view if they wish. Mr Mills: I think I would make the topic training, because I think certainly with the extra effort the Met has been pouring into raising the awareness of their managers of all the issues around diversity, that has helped improve things. It has certainly made people aware that they need to improve their outlook when dealing with such issues, so I would say that that has been a sad commentary on the Met that the training for police staff is woefully inadequate, and I do believe that would improve things immeasurably, if everybody had regular and consistent managerial training around diversity issues. Sir William Morris: Right, well, can I just say that completes my initial questions, and I want straight away to turn to Miss Weekes, I know that she has one or two questions she would like to put to you and your colleagues. Questions by Miss Weekes Miss Weekes: Thank you. Can I go back to the question of your relationship or non-relationship with the Police Federation? I know that your comments were that because effectively the representative groups are really different, there is not necessity for coming together. I am not suggesting that you should. But you have commented that your chapter would be the relationship between police officers and staff, and you would wish it to be closer. Having separate unions keeps that separate, does it not? Mr Justham: Unfortunately, our view of the Police Federation is not necessarily that they are a union, because they do not appear to have the same responsibilities to their membership as we do. There are different areas around the fact that they are set up by statute, and we have to live more on democracy, within our organisations. We have to actually go out and actively recruit our membership; the Police Federation is more membership by default, as I think I am right in understanding that all police officers are members of the Federation whether or not they pay subscriptions or not. Whereas we have to be more positive in our recruitment to ensure that we are representative of the bulk of police staff. So I think there are concerns around that which make it very hard to have a close relationship with the Federation. In the past, we have, around certain issues that were mutually helpful to us – before the police officers were included under the Health and Safety Act, we had quite a close relationship with the Federation around health and safety, and that has continued following the police officers coming under the Health and Safety Act, so there are areas where we have similar concerns and similar fears. However, on a number of occasions, where we are dealing with consultation, sometimes our views and needs are actually diametrically opposed to the Federation. An example of that is the introduction of PCSOs into the organisation. Whilst we have a number of concerns about how they have been introduced, the amount of training, their pay and conditions, we support their existence within the organisation. However, the Police Federation have always appeared to be opposed to PCSOs coming into the organisation, and have in the past put up a number of barriers to what we would see as their successful introduction to the organisation, and may have contributed to some of the concerns that we are now finding around PCSOs, because the appearance is that they have not welcomed PCSOs into the organisation. Miss Weekes: Can I just follow up on that helpful explanation one point, and it is your description that you would not yourself class the Police Federation as a classical union as such, if I can use my words. How does that demonstrate itself in practical terms, when it comes to representing a large number of people who would not normally have a voice unless they had representation? Mr Justham: If I understand your question right, you are asking me about my views about the Police Federation and how they are – in a lot of ways, we are jealous of what the Police Federation has, because on so many levels, they are supported much more by the organisation than we are. The Police Federation have reps on boroughs, who are given formal accommodation. The majority of them are working full time or with a high degree of facility time on their borough, and being allowed to carry out that role. Whereas for police staff, we tend to find, certainly locally, we have a lot of problems around allocation of facility time, and one of my concerns going back to the partnership agreement was the hope with that was because it was devolving union representation down to a local level, the fact that lead reps in a borough would only really need the facility time that they needed to carry out work on their local borough – our hope was that that would lighten the role on central representatives, because obviously the local representative would only be dealing with problems that the borough had caused, and therefore the borough should be giving them time to deal with that. We have noted that that is not necessarily the case and there are barriers put in front of our local representatives from actually taking the facility time they need to deal with the issues at a local level. One of the ways of easing our concerns around devolution of misconduct and this sort of thing would be to ensure our local reps had the facility time they needed to deal with those problems at the lowest possible level. Consequently, we see a lot of problems with the Federation, because we see that they have so much in the way of facilities, and they can also fall back on the law and statutes to defend their members, whereas we must argue more broadly and actually try and get balance of probability in discipline cases, for instance, whereas the assumption – my personal feeling is that in a misconduct that involves a police officer and a member of police staff, the police officer is almost perceived as being innocent, whereas the member of police staff, well, that is not quite the case, so there is not necessarily that sort of defence of the member of police staff that has been involved in a similar situation to the police officer. I think that is one of our concerns over our relationship with the Federation, that in a number of areas where we want to see increased civilianisation, the feeling is that possibly they do not want to see that. Miss Weekes: Undoubtedly because of their statutory protections. Mr Justham: Yes. Miss Weekes: Do you think that is ever going to change? You are not statutory and they are; is that ever going to change? Mr Justham: I would like to think that it could do, but I am not sure that it would change in the way that I would want it to change. Miss Weekes: How would you want to bring about that change? Mr Justham: Well, I would like to see more rights for the trade unions, and bring them up on a level playing field with the Federation. However, the only way I see it changing is that the Federation may be brought down to a level playing field with the trade unions. Miss Weekes: To put it bluntly, they should give up their statutory basis. Mr Justham: I am not arguing that, because I am arguing that I would want to see the trade unions given more rights and authorities on a statutory basis. However, I am not sure that there is ever going to be political will to allow that to happen. Miss Weekes: Can I move to two questions I have about the staff, because you really are the eyes and ears of the staff in the Metropolitan Police; correct? And all staff. Mr Justham: All police staff, yes, we have representation rights for all police staff. Miss Weekes: I first of all want to deal with the terms and conditions of employment. Do you have any helpful comments that you can tell us that we should bear in mind when we come to consider, you know, the overall view? Are you happy with the terms and conditions of employment? Do they affect the staff in relation to complaints, discipline, training, all the issues that fall within our terms of reference? Mr Justham: I think in general, I would say that terms and conditions – bearing in mind I am being recorded – could be regarded as being reasonable. I think one of our main concerns is, though, that new groups of staff being introduced into the service appear to be being introduced on diminished terms and conditions. The worry is that that seems to be the way that the MPA want to go with terms and conditions, and actually move away from some of our terms and conditions, so, for instance, PCSOs and detention officers are actually being recruited on slightly poorer terms and conditions, and that is a concern, because we have not been involved in any consultation around terms and conditions before they were introduced; they were just introduced, and therefore we are having to fight in retrospect to try and get their terms and conditions improved to the level that we enjoy. Miss Weekes: The process and procedures by which staff are dealt with when complaints are brought, internal disciplinary, the new Fairness at Work – I am going to come to Fairness at Work in a moment, but I really just want to deal with the structure and procedure. Are you happy with that? Mr Justham: If I could defer to Russell around that, because as I said, he has more expertise in dealing with the – Miss Weekes: Can I just preface my question by saying that I have compared your procedures, the flow chart, to the flow chart for the officers, and I must say, I find it far more digestible and readable, and I can follow the one for the staff. But I think it is right for you to help us as to what you think presently is your view about those procedures. Mr Mills: Well, we did not have a problem with the Fairness at Work in principle. The issue arose over how they were going to pick their Fairness at Work advisors, and if you like, the component members of the scheme. Because of the haste with which it was inevitably required to be introduced, we ended up with a situation where the Met was not able to get enough people to stand up and take part in the Fairness at Work as it would have liked. As a sort of default option, they then dropped back and started more or less appointing people to the role. Now the difficult – Miss Weekes: Can I just interrupt slightly? I am going to come to Fairness at Work and deal with exactly the point you raise. Can you just help me as to whether the procedure by which you do things to deal with internal complaints for staff or discipline – is that all right? Would you say that does not need to be altered? Mr Mills: We do have problems around the internal procedure, because it is based on a local model. Essentially, what you have to do – if you have got a problem with the workplace, it is inevitable that the first person you have to complain to is your line manager. Now the difficulty that that presents us with is that the line of appeal is that line manager's line manager, and consequently, you end up with a situation where the chances of winning an appeal become very remote, because you tend to find that the managers back their own managers up. The simple reason for that is that it is almost like a mutual support organisation; if you criticise the guy that is delivering all the work from the rock face, and if you comment adversely about the way he has proceeded with something, then the chances of him delivering the work or her delivering the work at a later date with the same efficacy that they did before is remote. So you almost get this situation where you have to support the management tiers within itself, and then any complaints are seen as a challenge of the whole structure, as opposed to the problems with one particular individual. So they are very loath to accept criticisms of their junior management or intermediate management. That then leaves the staff with a view that it is largely pointless challenging a situation, because there is no, if you like, independent or external avenue of approach; it has to go through your line management. Miss Weekes: That is quite important, and I have to say, that is the first time we have heard it, because, of course, this is the first time we are hearing the staff position in detail. Does that mean that you might consider altering the system to have more independence within that process? Mr Mills: It would certainly be more attractive to the unions, and we have been pressing for this for ages: one of the proposals we tried to put to the official side was that if there were a problem with a unit on a borough, you could at least transfer it to another borough, but they are very wedded to this idea that local problems require local knowledge and, as such, if you bring in an outside body to review that problem, they will not necessarily be aware of all the, if you like, informal background knowledge that could be pertinent to the case. Miss Weekes: Well, do you agree with that? Mr Mills: No, I mean, I would much rather have independence in every case. Certainly when – I mean, I have been around a few years, but when we used to have to refer back to the centre, there was no, if you like, local loyalties to interfere with the process or the decisions. So you used to find if you went to central personnel with a discipline case, they were much better placed to be objective about the actual evidence of the case, and not take into account that if manager A got criticised by manager B, that might interfere with the work flow. Miss Weekes: I am particularly interested in going back to the centre, and it is helpful that we have you here, because it is real evidence. Just how did it work before? Because it is clear you are telling us you prefer what happened before. Can you take me through it? Mr Mills: What would happen is if a discipline – I will cite the most extreme example. If there was a serious case involved, the local managers would have to prepare their submission, as, if you like, the prosecuting party; the member and then the union official would prepare a defence. Both case papers would then be submitted to the centre. The centre would then appoint – Miss Weekes: And the centre, what is it? Mr Mills: This would be like HR at Regency Street, for example. So all the case papers would go to HR at Regency Street who would then appoint, if you like, almost an officer to make a judgment on that. They would then invite the member and his representative to come forward to that meeting. You would then present your case in support of what the paperwork was, and they would more or less make a judgment. Miss Weekes: Right. Now two things that might be said about that old system, I do not know, we will undoubtedly consider putting it to HR, if they are called back: was it quick? Was it efficient? Mr Mills: I would not have said that it was any more quicker or efficient than the current system, because obviously the issues there were trying to make people available at the centre. I would say it was seen as more objective, and to me, that was the greater value of it; at least you felt you were going to get an objective hearing, more so than you would do locally, because there were not these local initiatives and requirements that interfered with the decision. Miss Weekes: And as you are the ears and eyes of the people you represent, on a straw poll, how many of your staff would say, "Yes, we do want to go back to the central approach"? Mr Mills: I would say most of them. Miss Weekes: What is most of them? Try and give me some figures. Mr Mills: 75 per cent. Miss Weekes: And you represent how many staff? Mr Mills: Well, the unions collectively have responsibility for something like 12,000, I think it is. Miss Weekes: So 75 per cent of 12,000 police staff, at this moment, would prefer the older system of going back to the centre? Mr Mills: Absolutely. Miss Weekes: Well, I am sure you have told management this. Mr Mills: To exhaustion. We have always been advocates of an independent central discipline and conduct process. Miss Weekes: What is the reply that management tell you, having repeatedly made this request? Mr Mills: They are wedded to this idea that boroughs have absolute control over their resources, and their issue again is always along the lines of, "Well, we might not be party to all the local information that would be pertinent to the actual case itself". So their defence has always been that the best people to know about, if you like, the validity of the arguments being put to them are the line managers themselves. Miss Weekes: So the result of what you have at the moment, because they are not picking up on your recommendation, is that staff back off from bringing complaints, is that right? Mr Mills: I would say that is an element in it, yes. Miss Weekes: And in any event, those that are brave enough to pursue it, there is not, from your point of view, true independence? Mr Mills: No. Miss Weekes: So what would your view be of the result, if members of staff are brave enough to use the present procedure? Mr Mills: There is a perception amongst the staff themselves that they are burning all their bridges if they make a complaint, so it has to be quite bad for them to make a complaint. Certainly all the time, when I am representing collective opinions to staff, I regularly get asked to do that by anonymising their comments; they are not comfortable with being identified with a comment that is critical. I also think that it does hamper staff complaining about genuine issues, because their view is: if it is contained and constrained by the local management, then the local management will pay more attention to, if you like, the unit's requirements than a genuine outcome. Miss Weekes: Why are managers so afraid to deal with criticism? Mr Mills: There is definitely a perception, it is certainly true in my grades, that if you make one mistake it follows you through your career. That actually does tend to materialise as the real thing: the people who make the serious mistakes find they do not get promoted, because it is so – everybody knows everybody else, and they know everybody else for years and years. It is almost like you cannot recover from a mistake that you made 20 years ago. I mean, I can remember in the early days representing a case where somebody had thrown at them their performance eight years earlier as a reason that they had made the same mistake twice. Now my view was, "Well, eight years that is a bit of a big separation to say it is a consistent failing for that individual". But that was the trouble: the people dealing with the inquiry were aware of the history and they had never forgotten that. So the managers are acutely aware that these things will come back to haunt them. They could go before a promotion board, and it would be, "Did you not make this mistake in 1996?" Miss Weekes: So the managers are covering their backs? Mr Mills: Absolutely. Miss Weekes: Well, that is clearly part of the blame culture, is it? Mr Mills: Yes, it is one of those things where somebody has to carry the blame for the mistake, and it is usually focused down on one individual. Miss Weekes: What is the way forward? Because this is clearly a very graphic example of why the workplace can be unhappy for a large number of people. What is the way forward? Mr Mills: I think it is more about trying to get to the idea that people can make mistakes, and it is not seen as a measure of incompetence, it is just accepted that they might not have been party to the knowledge necessary to deal with that complaint properly. It does come down to raising awareness and treating staff in such a fashion that they can make mistakes and they will not get pilloried for it. At the moment in time, we do not have that culture. It is working its way through, and it is not becoming as acute as it was, and it is getting better, but there are still what I would call some of the old guard, "Well, that is the way I always did it, so that is the way I will do it for this week as well". Miss Weekes: Well, have you spoken to the Assistant Commissioner HR about this very fact? Mr Mills: We regularly in our monthly meetings convey the idea that we have got this problem with one person being blamed for all the issues, and I think that has partly been our support around the idea of a centralised discipline process, is it actually takes the blame culture away. It delivers a situation where a third independent party has made a judgment, and they have made it on the case papers that have come to them, and it gets people out of actually having to defend themselves, because a third party has made that decision. Miss Weekes: If you are going to centralise it, is that going to put pressure back on HR? Are you not going to need more resources? Mr Mills: Yes, I would say there are economies of scale that do help that, though. I know in the past that HR have defended it on the grounds, "Well, you are going to need to have a significant block of people at the centre", that they do not have now. But I would argue much in support of what Rob Justham said: you have got some very, if you like – well, it is difficult to quantify it, but they are not trained to deal with these things on a regular basis. As a consequence, exactly, I have had cases where the manager has had a gross misconduct, and he has never dealt with a gross misconduct, so he has no background to the issues around that. He is literally dropped in at the deep end on a very serious issue, because he or she is going to be made aware that they could be taken to a tribunal at a later date, and it makes them very hesitant to be flexible around the issues. It makes them very hesitant to do anything other than stick to the rule book. My view would be, with a central policy, there is more consistency in the penalties you get throughout the organisation, you are going to make sure that in, say, one borough, A, the penalty for losing your pass is not more severe than it is in borough B, and you can also keep an idea of what the trends are corporately. So I would say the benefits outweigh the additional resourcing costs. Miss Weekes: And how long have you been presenting this option to higher management? Mr Mills: Ever since they devolved it. I mean, literally, when they stepped away from a centralised system and devolved it, we have been arguing that it has not worked from day one to the level it should. Miss Weekes: I am sorry I dealt with that in detail, but it was very important, and I am very grateful for your assistance on it. Can I come back – I interrupted you on Fairness at Work, because I needed to understand that point. Can I come back to Fairness at Work, if I may? You were beginning to tell us quite importantly what your views are of this new procedure; it is new because it was set up last year. I think it has now been in place – well, it is almost a year. It began last April, and we are at 1st April today. Mr Mills: That is correct. Miss Weekes: Is it working? Mr Mills: It has had teething problems, but I certainly would say it is a step in the right direction. I think the teething problems arise from – again, we have not got away from, as much as we would like, the almost – very close relationship between the people actually carrying out the process and the units they are working with, because due to the constraints on numbers of people offering to do the work, literally the Met had to appoint its personnel managers as the Fairness at Work advisors. Now from our point of view, we have encountered problems in the past with the odd personnel manager, and their views of the world, if you like. So we felt that it would actually carry through the bad practice that had occurred in the past, for it to be done this way. The drawback was that the Met's view, "Well, we need a replacement, we need to do it fast, no one is coming up to put their name in the frame, so we have to find some way of appointing these Fairness at Work advisors". The problems we were encountering around it were that at the initial stages, it was being made clear that they would not – local units would not have welcomed having certain appointed staff spending all their time on Fairness at Work. So the perception was if you did get volunteers from a local level who were very good at it, they would suddenly find themselves being asked to intervene all over the Met, and as a consequence, their local units would then start turning round and saying, "Well, he or she is never here, they are always off doing Fairness at Work cases". There is also a perception amongst the staff that they might be arguing or making judgments against very senior figures in the organisation, and we come back to the fear factor there: how do you tell a commander that his decision on a Fairness at Work case was wrong, and that he should have actually done something differently? Miss Weekes: Just one second. Sir William Morris: Can I say that I am proposing to adjourn for about five or ten minutes or so. We have some very hard workers over there, the stenographers, and it is our practice to ensure that they have a proper break. So five to ten minutes. Thank you. (11.47 am) (A short break) (11.55 am) Sir William Morris: Okay, are you ready? We will recommence then. Miss Weekes: Thank you very much. Just following on from your comments before the short break, I wonder if we might just look at an important comment made within your submissions at MXT 1/18; it will come up on the screen for you. It is at paragraph 8.10; if I could just quickly read it: "The grievance procedure was replaced by a Fairness at Work policy in 2003. This change arose from the Virdi Inquiry. The intention was to take responsibility for resolving grievances away from line managers and give it to specially trained, independent and impartial Fairness at Work advisors. The trades unions were involved in developing this policy and were very supportive of its underlying principles. We were forced to withdraw our support for the policy when the MPS insisted that local personnel managers identify and select Fairness at Work advisors for their own units." I think that incorporates what you have already said, but in addition, can I ask you this: have I still withdrawn your support? I mean, what is the status quo at the moment? Mr Mills: Well, as it stands, we are in the same position we were before, because whilst we are – if you like, we are taking a watching brief of the situation, and seeing how it develops. Our view has always been that there needed to be specialist training for this role, and just giving it to existing staff, albeit that they were personnel managers, was not sufficient, given the seriousness of what they would be dealing with. Miss Weekes: And that conveniently takes me to the whole topic of training. You identified that in your chapter, in answer to the chairman's question, you would deal with training. Now just give me a little bit of your history, just so that I understand the merit we can give to your answers. You said you have been in this job for some time; how long? Mr Mills: Well, I started in the fingerprint bureau in 1980 as a trainee fingerprint expert, and I joined the local fingerprint section committee in 1984. I have been active in that committee ever since, and also I have been the branch secretary for over ten years. Miss Weekes: Right. So you have seen the Met change, and you are familiar with all staff issues. Mr Mills: Yes. Miss Weekes: Well, training is a topic for us, for obvious reasons. I have said this to others and I will say it to you: in almost every single inquiry or investigation or document, the word training comes up. I would like some help from you practically: what is it that you want within the training package? There is no point saying "more training", because you may get the reply from higher management, "Well, we have given you enough, the budget is huge, and these officers cannot come out to do it". So in your assistance for me, we really do want some practical advice as to what should go into the training packages to produce the reforms you want, and I really want some help on how it is you are going to make officers attend the training. Mr Mills: Well, our view has always been that you can take a horse to water but you cannot make them drink, but we would then say that you then have to make it an incentivised thing. In the past, certainly in my union, we actually tied incremental points to people's training for the trainees, the new intake, and they seemed very happy with that. The reason they were happy with that was because when you pass the course, you get the money. So to the staff, it was a more attractive approach, because it was not you pass the course and the manager says, "You are doing okay so you get the money", it was: pass the course, get the money. If I had to say where I would target it specifically, it is at the various levels of management promotion. Now at the moment, somebody gets promoted for their first level manager role, they get a training course, and that is it for the rest of their career, literally. Unless they get fast tracked or picked out for special attention; it is almost on a case of, "We have got four vacancies here, who wants to do it?" Now I know the organisation is trying to be a bit more proactive in targeting individuals for fast tracking and for developmental training, but it is still in its infancy. I would say, for every promotion, if it be to level one, two, three manager, you should have managerial training tied to that that explains your broader brief in that higher level, so I would like to see it tied to every promotion that somebody gets, or to every change in role, so if they change a role from a band B on borough to a band B in the centre, they would then have a training course to acclimatise them to the needs of that particular role. Miss Weekes: Now what is higher management saying about this? Mr Mills: They are just saying they have not got the resources to be able to deliver for every member of staff. The drawback we seem to notice on a regular basis is whenever we start talking about budgetary constraints, training is one of the first things to go out of the window. In recent discussions around it, obviously HR have pointed out that there are mandatory requirements for police training that they have to fulfil, but that is not true for civil staff, or police staff, I should say. Miss Weekes: That brings me to the very question I was going to ask: quite often, the only way to get people to do things is that you say, "It is mandatory, it is obligatory, you have to do it". Why is there the distinction then? That with civil staff, it is not mandatory, but with others, it is? Mr Mills: I think it is because with police officers, there are these requirements to know about PACE and all the legal frameworks they will actually be enforcing, whereas with the police staff, there is no consequence – no legal consequence to them not correctly performing their role. It is not like a member of civil staff could actually be pilloried for doing PACE incorrectly, because they do not get to arrest people and they do not get to have to read them their rights. I would say there is equally a value to making parts of civil staff training mandatory, because a lot of the consequences are what I would call hidden consequences. It is very difficult to say, "You will have a significant financial impact if you do not get this training"; we know it is true, but with a police officer, it is, "Well, this person is going to take you to court and sue you for wrongful arrest". That is less apparent with the civil staff, but I think it is equally true that if you looked at it corporately, you could say, "Well, because we did not deliver this training, this financial consequence arose as a result of that", but it is more of a subtle consequence, not a direct one. Miss Weekes: Well, an obvious argument to me, but it is your evidence that is more important, not my suggestions is the knock-on effect if you have untrained bad managers who have no PR personnel expertise; you get unhappy staff, they leave and they go to ETs, and it costs the Met, but I am sure you have tried that argument. Mr Mills: Well, again, what you get faced with is, "Show it as a business case", and you cannot do that, because you are being asked, "How many of these cases would actually have been as a result of failing to resolve it informally at a lower level?", and you cannot quantify that. But I could make a ballpark guess that a significant number of cases that get to ET are almost certainly down to that factor. I agree entirely with you. The cost to the Met, that bad managers do lead to a hell of a lot of effort being put into disciplinaries above and beyond really what was required. Miss Weekes: What about this additional argument? Again, I am sure it is not new; with your background and expertise, you will have thought of it. It is quite clear to me that the majority of staff, police staff, come from visible ethnic minorities, especially women. Well, does it not matter to higher management how you are treating that sector of people? Mr Mills: They have started to come round to the idea that it is a big issue. As part of last year's pay negotiations, we have pushed the idea that there should be an equality proofing review of the pay structures; myself and my colleague have been involved in that, and it hopes to report at the end of April. It has been slow in coming though; I know in my early days, there were significant problems around managers and women in primary care roles. We had significant pushes to get the organisation to be supportive of training around that; issues that arose were initially, when I first started to deal with it – the argument was, well, you should not get promoted above a certain level if you have got primary care. The second issue was: we will only pay for childcare if it is with certain childcare facilities. All these issues were overcome and the case was made for the organisation to be more supportive. If I were honest about it, I would say that was the old mentality that largely has been brushed away by modern developments. But it is one of those things where we have been recruiting women and visible ethnic minorities for a considerable period of time, and I would say the only significant improvements we have seen are changes in the last five to six years really. Miss Weekes: So if we – and I have no idea what our recommendations are going to be, but if one of the recommendations were: you must provide in your budget compulsory training for staff; what do you think higher management is going to say to that? Mr Mills: I think they would endorse it if they were given the financial resources to do it. I have never got the feeling that they were resisting it for any other reason than resources issues, they just cannot deliver it because they have not got the money. Miss Weekes: Just one other aspect of training: what should be in the package? We hear about training, we hear it has been delivered, I note in your submissions that it is a one day affair and then that is it. Personnel skills are very specific. They are often very difficult, and they require personal commitment to do them well. What do you say should be in the training package, and are they being delivered? The training that allows a man or a woman to manage staff in an up-to-date, fair, sensitive fashion. Mr Mills: I would say current training packages try to cram too much in in too short a space of time. It is almost like, "These are the rules and regulations, now memorise these and make sure you apply them properly". Exactly your point around the issues of, if you like, being people friendly are not a major emphasis; I think the problem related to that is more to do with the culture. The culture is one of, "Well, we cannot be seen to be too friendly, because actually, that creates a wrong impression for the staff, it is an indication of weakness". Miss Weekes: Well, I know that my colleague has some questions on culture in the Met – Mr Justham: Could I just make a comment on training? I think one of the areas that we find useful from the trade union side, and this is why we are looking to develop learning reps, is the type of course that the TUC provides, which is not a block five day course, but it is a course that is developed over a number of weeks. What that allows is for the representative to go to the course, learn some skills, and actually go back to the workplace, to put them into practice and come back the next week to review how that has gone. What we tend to find is within the Met's training, there is no review day. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to go on a RUNGE course, which was the Met's senior leadership course that they had about two or three years ago, and what that had – it was a four day course, but three months later, there was a review day where you could actually go back and test what you had learnt from the course and how you had put it into practice. I think that is one of the things within training that we really need to learn, that there needs to be ongoing care of the member of staff, not just you have done your one day, therefore you are a manager, or you have done your two days: you need that ongoing support, and I think that is what we develop for our reps with the TUC courses, which tend to be very popular, and actually very useful for our reps. Miss Weekes: Thank you very much for that. I now want to turn to the topic of employment tribunals; I know you have commented on that, and I think your colleague has. Do you mind if she comes to the desk, please? But I think I am going to need you both. Sorry, I am not getting rid of you. It is simply because you have both commented on the initial legal advice that you get; I have recorded both your comments, and I am interested in it. First of all yours: when your members come to you with a complaint, or it is a disciplinary issue, before you can actually decide to represent them at an employment tribunal case, you obtain legal advice, and you get what is called a success rate; is that right? Ms Yesildalli: Yes, it is not something that is done initially. You get more aware of what the actual case is as you start working on it with the member concerned, and when concerns are raised around disability or race or gender or anything else, that is when we send it off for legal advice too. It is in a short time though, it would be within the first six weeks and everything else, so we can make sure they are protected from every angle. Miss Weekes: I understand. I want to just ask you how your relationship – or how do you view the legal department of the Met, in relation to the running of employment tribunal cases? We have heard from the director of legal services. I just wonder whether you have any comments that may assist us when we look at that relationship. Does it work, are there improvements that you think could be made? Ms Yesildalli: My own experience with our own legal department is they have actually been quite difficult and unhelpful. Miss Weekes: Why is that? Ms Yesildalli: It just seems that they are all out to protect the Met, and the Met's name. The last thing on their mind is actually, if any of the accusations are true, so it seems – and in the past, with employment tribunals that we have tried to pursue and everything else, it has been – some of them have been lost rather on legal technicalities, rather than the issues that the member has been pursuing. Miss Weekes: What is your view about resolving disputes, even at a point where one of your members has lodged; what would be your efforts, and how successful have they been? Because everybody knows, of course, allowing a case to go to an ET is not a success for either party, but in your dealings again with the legal department, what is your experience of trying to resolve it, even though a member has lodged? Ms Yesildalli: Even trying to resolve cases like that, it has been difficult; whilst we have been – quite recently, whilst we have been trying to resolve one particular case – I have to add, it was not me who personally represented this member, it was somebody else. But during that time, another issue had come up where that member was facing discipline from another area, the same member that has lodged the tribunal. When we were trying to negotiate out of court, if you like, the new inquiry was mentioned in the letter to us with the resolution, it was like, "If you carry on with this tribunal, then we will come down even harder on this issue". Miss Weekes: You took it to be a subtle threat? Ms Yesildalli: Yes. Miss Weekes: This Inquiry is not just about identifying the problems, it is about identifying what you see to be the solutions. Well, how can your relationship with the legal department be improved so they do not think it is about protecting the Met's name, and you can both try to resolve? Ms Yesildalli: I do not know, sometimes I think it would be good if we had somewhere in between, where after cases have ended, or where we have sought resolution and everything else, is from the issues that have arisen to delay such resolution and everything else, if we could have some kind of a forum where we met to discuss things like that. Miss Weekes: So built into the system at the moment, you do not think there is a stage or a step that you can say, "Okay, my member has lodged, and I see your response, but can we take some time out and chat?" Ms Yesildalli: No, there is not a system. Miss Weekes: There is not that step built in? Ms Yesildalli: No. Miss Weekes: Well, have you tried it? Ms Yesildalli: Yes, we have tried it with senior personnel managers, and we have always – it has always just been stuck with senior personnel managers. Miss Weekes: Because, of course, you can decide to resolve a dispute at any stage, as long as you have not got your date for the tribunal and you are not actually there. So at the moment, there is not that facility? Ms Yesildalli: No, not with the legal department. Miss Weekes: Do you want to add anything to that? Mr Mills: All I was going to add is the one time where I dealt with a case where we tried to do that informal step, it was almost seen as, "They have not got a case, so we can ignore it". It was perceived again as a weakness on our part to make that approach. To try and resolve it informally was, "Well, their legal case must be telling them they are not going to win it". So I think that is what has hamstrung that approach, is that both sides almost view it that if there is an approach that suggests some kind of compromise discussion; it is a sign of weakness from that party. Miss Weekes: Well, let me put what might be the response from management – this is just a theory, it may be completely wrong. Management may say, "Well, actually, what really happens is that your members are quite stubborn, and they are the ones that want the tribunal case, they want compensation, they want money"; is that a possible fair comment that you might get from management? Ms Yesildalli: Management might come back and say that, but what we find with the members that are actually pursuing tribunals – they are so stressed by it all and actually suffering that it is not stubborn that comes out straight away, it is just that frustration of the whole process. Miss Weekes: Well, what is your general view? Again, we really want some evidence here: what is your general view about why the majority of people are lodging employment tribunal claims? Is it because they have to? Ms Yesildalli: I think it is because they want management to take them more seriously than if they were to just stick to the internal procedures, they want that extra protection, because they do not trust management to deal with it straight away, effectively, and they see that as a protection. Miss Weekes: Well, have you told management this? Ms Yesildalli: Yes. Miss Weekes: What is the response? Ms Yesildalli: It is just – it is negative. It is that you cannot stop individuals putting in employment tribunals. Miss Weekes: What, they have a right? Ms Yesildalli: Yes. Miss Weekes: Now what is the trend that you both see coming out of employment tribunal claims? I put this question to the Federation yesterday, and I think it is an important one if you can help us. It is helpful, is it not, to identify trends because then you can work out what is going on with the workforce; why are people going to employment tribunals, what is the recurring issue on race and gender? I have picked those two because that is what police officers are allowed to lodge for. Yours for staff is much wider, so I really want from you: what is the trend? Why are staff going to employment tribunals? Mr Mills: I think it is exactly what my colleague identified partly in her earlier answer, it is the perception that they will only get an independent hearing at a tribunal. It is not about money, we make it very clear to them at the outset that if they are looking for retirement for life, that is not going to happen. I make it clear to all the cases I deal with that that is not likely to happen. It is just that they give up on the internal process, and they actually go through it almost as a matter of rote. The other issue for us is that people perceive that it is the Met just – if they do not lodge for a tribunal, they run out of time, and this was definitely a trend in recent years where it was perceived – I think I even had a comment from one chair of a tribunal, when he knew I was from the Met Police, he said, "They do seem to take a lot of time to resolve their cases, and they always seem to come to tribunal", and he asked me if that was why we had to lodge, and more or less it was. It was one of those things where you know it is going to take longer than the time limits that are allowed before you can get a resolution, so it is almost as a safeguard that you have to lodge for tribunal, and once you do that, they get very polarised in their approach, it is very much, "Well, now you have made it formal, we cannot talk to you any more". So I would certainly say, if they had more belief in an internal process or in an independent internal process, you probably would not get half the cases you get now. Miss Weekes: Yes. Do you have anything to add to that? Ms Yesildalli: No. Miss Weekes: What topics repeatedly come up in the ET1s? Ms Yesildalli: I would say from my own handlings and everything, it is mainly from women, the topics that come up. It is usually about flexibility and working arrangements, term time working, and changing their hours from full-time contracts to either part-time or part hours. Miss Weekes: Right, well, you help us; what is the difficulty that management have with women changing from full-time hours to part-time under the part time regulations? Ms Yesildalli: The example I will give is from the PCSOs, the police community support officers. They have got the shifts that they work and everything else. The way that it has been managed in some instances is where everyone is meant to fit around the shift, and the majority of the other workers, rather than management be able to look at your hours and change them to accommodate you. It is identifying individuality within the teams. Miss Weekes: Well, what has been your suggestion to management for change? Ms Yesildalli: Well, most of the time it is a training curve again, because it is the unions that send to those local managers what the guidelines are and what the law is and everything else. They look through them and then after time, they do actually come round and – Miss Weekes: But it takes time? Ms Yesildalli: Yes. Miss Weekes: So what would you say the state of the improvement is in relation to women wanting to legitimately change their hours of work? Is it good, generally, I mean, are we seeing an improvement from management on that? Ms Yesildalli: No, because there is nothing actually published, like from management. If you were to phone up the HR directorate and ask for – even on the website or anything else, it is very basic, it is not in any detail whatsoever. Of course, that is what local managers are accessing too, the website, for information, if they cannot get hold of experts in this field. So I think there needs to be a lot more information published and printed for everybody to use. Miss Weekes: I would like to just turn to the issue of race discrimination cases which are being lodged at the employment tribunals. Again, what is the trend that you both see, what is the reason that visible ethnic minorities go to employment tribunals? Ms Yesildalli: I think again it is what I said earlier, not having the confidence in the Met, in the system in the Met, for them to be able to deal with it, and for that extra protection? Miss Weekes: Yes. Any particular topics that you see recurring? I know that race discrimination is a broad topic, but on the ET1s often one can see a particular trend? Ms Yesildalli: No, I could not just identify one. Mr Mills: I would say that the ones that are coming up for me is opportunity; they tend to feel that developmental opportunities and access to promotion – the cases I have dealt with, luckily, I think, we have managed to persuade local management that there are needs to address, so in recent years, I have not had to go to ETs with them, but certainly, the most consistent feature was, "I am not getting the same opportunity to be moved to developmental sites, I am not getting considered for promotion in the same way as everybody else", those seem to be the key factors. Miss Weekes: As a public inquiry, if we said to you: where do you get this evidence? The fact that somebody puts it in an ET1 does not necessarily mean it is based upon solid ground. It could be, but it may not be. Where do we look for this evidence, that there is disparity between the treatment of a black and a white officer when it comes to opportunities and promotion? Mr Mills: The problem that we are all going to have is that the statistics to evidence it either way just are not available at the moment. You tend to find, and I certainly find this with representing colleagues like that, once you try to pursue it too vigorously, they become concerned about their profile in the organisation, and the negative associations with that profile. In the past, I have had cases where I have had to literally pursue it against the wishes of the individual, because their perception was that they would be incorrectly perceived as using the race card, to put it bluntly. Now I did pursue a case, but to try and statistically prove that that was a problem would be very difficult; it was just my perception from him telling me the details of his circumstances, it just struck me that I had explored all the possible options it could have been, and it just left me with the assumption that it was racially based. But he did not want to draw that conclusion, because it would have been – he got on very well with his local colleagues, and he just could not perceive that that would be an underlying issue. Miss Weekes: You must be aware, and I put this question to others – I do not know what extent it is, but white officers have lodged at employment tribunals, claiming race discrimination and using a black officer staff as a comparator; have you come across that? Mr Mills: I would not say I have had anything go to that level. I did have a white colleague feel that the issues around training for white officers were being ignored, but he made it abundantly clear that he was not making that comparison; he was saying it was being ignored for everybody, but the approach seemed to be, "Well, we will only concentrate on the training for visible ethnic minorities", and his view was, "Well, let us not isolate people in this fashion, let us accept it is bad for everybody". Miss Weekes: Do you both consider that the agenda for race and diversity and the position that race issues have within diversity, correctly held, has now swamped the issue on gender? Do your staff feel that? Mr Mills: Yes, if you said, do my members feel that is the way it is, then certainly, I think they do. I think they are a bit mistaken about that, because my perception is that as I illustrated earlier, with the equality proofing review, the Met is accepting that for gender, it is still a very big issue. So I do not think it has got swamped strategically for the Met, I just think the perception at grass roots level is that it is. But I think that is an exaggerated perception. Miss Weekes: Just one final point, if I may: you make the comment in your written submissions that there is a bit of a difficulty often with the roles and responsibilities of staff associations and your roles as union reps. You talked about the protocol that is not yet in place; is that right? Mr Mills: That is correct. Miss Weekes: We are going to hear, for example, from the Black Police Association this afternoon, so it will be helpful if you could tell us how you would like that relationship to be run, with your position as representative elected reps, and those of the staff associations. Ms Yesildalli: We have in the past worked quite closely, when representing members, with individual members of the staff associations, but what we find with the trade unions is that when we have got our own union members that we are representing, we sometimes get into more difficulty, because they are also being advised by the staff associations, and are coming back and obviously questioning our advice, and it does actually strain relations. When we get legal advice, and the legal advice is questioned, I am not qualified to question someone else's actual legal advice, but this is what we seem to get happening with the staff associations, and certain members of the staff associations. So from that, relations are strained. The other thing is, it is the way that management are managing the whole process with the staff associations; it is definitely in PCS, we feel that, but they are putting more resources into the staff associations, as an excuse not to resource the trade unions. Management have brought in devolvement, but they have not devolved the partnership agreement as far as trade union reps, workplace reps, and everything else. For the 6,000 members I have in my union in the Met Police, we have got six people on full facilities. So there is that strain there too, where one set of associations, if you like, are being resourced to the max, and the trade unions are not. It is something that we are actually pursuing. Miss Weekes: You are pursuing that? Ms Yesildalli: Yes. Miss Weekes: Thank you both very much. Sir William Morris: Thank you both. I will in a minute pass you over to Sir Anthony Burden for his questions, but just before we move on, I do not want to lose my thoughts about a couple of points, just for clarification. Further questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: First of all, I might have misheard on the question of training, but I thought it was said earlier on that there is a provision for two days' training in the Met; did I hear that? I think it was Mr Justham who said that there was provision for two days' training. Mr Justham: Yes, as part of the initiative I mentioned about the police staff training board, it is the intention that all police staff should receive two days' training. But there is no specification about what that training may be. Sir William Morris: Yes, of course. Will that go universally right across the organisation? Mr Justham: Yes, it is hoped that that will be for all police staff. Sir William Morris: So it will become, if you like, a collective agreement on training, that everyone has maximum of two days' training annually across the board? Mr Justham: Yes. Sir William Morris: Fine. Mr Justham: We do have some concerns about some of the caveats that management are putting around certain elements of training, which are tying staff to certain roles for a period of time because they have had specific training, and we are trying to get guarantees around job specific training not counting towards that. Sir William Morris: I recognise that there is bound to be a conversation around the details, but I am just trying to declare that it is an accepted principle which will form part of a collective agreement. Mr Justham: Yes. Sir William Morris: Fine, okay. The other point that I wanted to just be clear about – it was not sort of explored in any depth, but on this question of industrial tribunal cases, I recognise and understand that once the ET1 has been lodged and the preliminary work and all that is done, my understanding is it goes outside the organisation to the legal office or whatever – I am assuming that is the trade union's solicitors, right – for a success rate assessment. Are you aware of the criteria that is used to make that assessment? Ms Yesildalli: Not in any detail, but what we are doing as a union is actually, when it comes to dealing with race cases especially, is seeking to actually get the percentage lifted, so that whereas in – Sir William Morris: What is