Transcript of public session: Mr L Logan, Mr B Powell, Mr A John and Mr G Reid of the Metropolitan Black Police Association

Thursday, 1 April 2004
2.05 pm

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone. We are just on the point of reconvening for the afternoon, and we are taking evidence from the Metropolitan Black Police Association.

Mr Logan, good afternoon to you, and indeed your colleagues. Can I first of all say thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and for letting us have your written submission which we found extremely helpful.

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

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

Mr Logan, 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. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation, and not the individuals who make up that organisation.

Let me say, as I have said on each and every occasion that we introduce witnesses, that the inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial and not, by nature or character, adversarial.

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

To help us in our task, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Met but what is right with it; but most importantly, we are seeking suggestions as to how matters can be put right in order to make the Metropolitan Police Service better.

For the record, a transcript is being taken, so that we have a proper record of the evidence given by witnesses. This will be posted on our website later today.

At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, Miss Weekes first, and then followed by Sir Anthony, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment if you so wish.

You have in your submission posted to us a number of very important pointers. The submission itself, as I have already said, will be on the website as part of your evidence, but you have set out for us informations under a whole range of headings. For the record, I will just refresh certainly my memory about what they are.

Firstly, you have set out the aims of the MBPA, and you have outlined your work initiatives. You say to us the MBPA views on the deficiencies in the policies, practices and procedures of the Met, relating to complaint, both external and internal, and you have indicated views on the Fairness at Work and the resolution of employment claims.

You have highlighted specific concerns relating to the MPCA's handling of investigations, and finally, throughout your submission, you have helpfully included a number of recommendations that you believe will resolve the issues identified.

We would like to ask you some questions about the materials that you have offered to us, and any other matters relating to our terms of reference, but before we raise these issues with you, however, for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder whether you would formally introduce yourself to the Inquiry, and of course your colleagues.

Mr Logan: Yes, thank you, chair. I am Leroy Logan, chairman of the Black Police Association in the Metropolitan Police Service. I am accompanied by Bevan Powell, the general secretary, together with Gareth Reid and Alfred John, who are the support co-ordinators of our support network.

Sir William Morris: Mr Logan, before I move to my questions, let me place on the record the following statement. I know that you are familiar with the terms of reference of this Inquiry. As you are aware, one aspect of our task is to examine the lessons to be learned from high-profile cases. These cases, by definition, relate to individuals, and will be dealt with in the same way as the submissions that we have received from a number of other individuals.

We have not yet reached that part of our work, and therefore today we will not be asking questions about any of the high-profile cases that we will be considering at some point in the future.

We will, of course, notify the parties concerned when we have reached that stage of the Inquiry, and we make seek your assistance again on that point.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Turning to my first question, let me say that I am interested in exploring whether the Met BPA is solely an organisation of police officers working for and on behalf of police officers and staff, or whether you have a campaigning role, a strong campaigning role with links and an agenda in the community; perhaps you can help to expand and enlighten our thoughts in respect of your organisation.

Mr Logan: As a founder member of the Metropolitan Black Police Association, together with members here in the audience, I recall our initial meeting in April 1993, and it was clear that we had a welfare and support role within the Met Police, but also to echo the concerns and issues of the black community that we are a part of: when I use the term black, as in our submission, I refer to the shared and common experience of people from African, African-Caribbean and Asian origins; it is not an assessment of colour. So in effect, we have a wide brief, supporting and focusing on the welfare issues within the personnel of the Met, as well as building bridges, strong partnerships with the black community, especially the hard to hear groups, which we refer to; not hard to reach, because we believe there are certain groups who would want to hear more from the Met, and also would like to make sure their voices are heard, and that is one of the reasons why we have an internal as well as an external focus.

Sir William Morris: The Met BPA is one of 14 support groups within the Metropolitan Police Service. Why do officers of the MPS need support groups when your members are all members of a very long established, statutorily supported trade union, it is called the Federation; why are support groups necessary?

Mr Logan: Well, let me emphasise in the first instance that the BPA is a rankless, gradeless organisation, made up of police officers as well as police staff, and it was as a result of the challenges and barriers that we had faced for a number of years which were put to the Federation for police officers, and the trade unions for police staff.

I truly believe it started from the 1970s, when that small nucleus of officers came together, and tried in their own ways to make changes within their own working environment, but the real catalyst was the Bristol seminars in 1990, where black officers were required to attend two-day seminars looking at the high resignation rates at that time.

There was a parallel process with police staff, they had a similar facilitated process, and those issues were like mirror images, and that is when we came together, from 1990 to 1993, and it was normally in a social setting; it was not only for us as personnel, but also with members of the community.

After three years of these various staff support processes, we then started to attract the community, and we thought, well, we have to do something about this. We would start to see solidarity, people identifying with us working in the police service, whether it be sworn or unsworn officers.

As a result of that, we said quite clearly that these issues that we have raised for so many years were not being addressed; not necessarily that people do not want to deal with it, I think it was also around they may not have the tools to deal with it, because a lot of our input in all of this is our life skills.

As I said, we are part of the black community, and we are able to use those experiences, those softer skills in every aspect of our work, but if we find that because of our diversity we are not being supported, we are not being assisted in a way that it should be, then we feel it, we know it, we have to do something about it.

That is the ethos of the BPA, highlighting the areas of concern, and making sure that we focus on them, and we have made it quite clear from the beginning, we are not a statutory union or federation, we are a staff support association with a unique and authoritative voice on issues of race and equality, because of our experience and our struggles.

Sir William Morris: Do you see yourselves as a competitor?

Mr Logan: I do not see us as a competitor, I see us adding value to these various federations and unions; I see us adding value to the processes and practices of the organisations, but not just to steer and advise, which we have been doing for many years, but also to develop our own policies, and that is why we have developed, within the organisation, the communities and cultural resource unit, which helps to enhance operational delivery in critical and serious major incidents, by having closer contact with communities who normally would not engage in police activities, and that was highlighted in the Damilola Taylor investigation.

We have also developed our community engagement and community empowerment programmes; again, because of the fact that is being conceived, developed and implemented by black personnel, we are able to develop stronger and more sustained programmes, and develop a methodology that can be replicated elsewhere, that has created some phenomenal outcomes, and I will just touch on one.

Earlier this week, one of our youth forum, the young black positive advocates, was shadowing the Commissioner. Two years ago, that young lady would not even think about speaking to a police officer, much less shadow the Commissioner, and it was because we created the right environment for them to know the skills in themselves, capacity building, develop self-esteem and confidence to operate outside their environment, and not become their environment, and as such, they are able to influence and challenge the thinking of various public and private organisations, and the people of authority in those organisations, and consequently, they feel confident to say to the Commissioner, "I would like to spend one or two days with you".

In the debrief that young lady had with the Commissioner, he actually – it was a fresh approach, a breath of fresh air for that young lady, that he said he wants her to be visiting him regularly, and in fact, she is going places where I have not been able to go, or my colleagues have not been able to go in the last 20 years.

Sir William Morris: We have taken evidence from the Federation both at Met level and national level. Can you describe for us the MBPA's relationship with the Federation at Met level?

Mr Logan: Well, even before we launched in September 1994, I remember there was a volley of hostile press statements, that we were breaking up the organisation, we were a splinter group, we were there to disrupt and not to assist, and there were certain pundits who were involved in the Federation at that time, and I think that created an uneasy – there was an inertia, and there was a distancing. Because we thought that our aims and objectives were laudable, we were not hiding, we were not in any way holding back from what we saw as important; we kept the Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, informed of what we were doing.

In all honesty, I think by their reaction, we were not surprised, because I think it was, for them, a mission of failure, because we are highlighting issues which they should have been addressing, in terms of race and equality.

I truly believe that legacy has continued, because we have not got that closeness that we should do, but we are saying, "We are not silent partners in this, we believe we should have strategic alliances within the Federation as equal in terms of what we add to the issues of race and equality and staff development, and working effectively for the community of London".

Now as a result of that, they still have a certain amount of difficulty in accepting us on that equal playing field. They are saying, well, you could join the Federation and come up through the ranks. Unfortunately, the culture of the organisation does not allow that. One of the things is, in terms of the Federation for police officers, we do not feel confident to even put ourselves forward, because we are relying on our majority culture colleagues to vote us in. So we actually deselect ourselves from the first instance.

Then also, we find that we are again hugging the lower ranks of the Federation, and are not going to influence the strategic issues that are impacting on us all, so in a lot of ways, we find that that is not the best way forward for us.

I do not know if Bevan wants to mention anything, in terms of the specific police staff side?

Mr Powell: I think a number of the issues that Leroy has highlighted equally apply to the police staff, in terms of issues of race not being adequately addressed by the unions, and as Leroy said, through our common experience of being members of the black community, we believe that many of these issues we can tackle more effectively.

Sir William Morris: Apart from the issues of race, is there any other issues, policy issues, organisational issues, structural issues, around which you take issue with the Federation?

Mr Logan: Well, in all honesty, we believe that as an organisation, we should be reflecting diversity throughout, and I think the Federation should be reflecting that, and the unions should be reflecting that, so by definition, they do reflect a strong monocultural emphasis, and I truly believe they are at a disadvantage by being in that position.

I remember some years ago being interviewed publicly on this matter, and I said the Federation reflect an institutionally racist organisation within themselves, because they do not have a positive action process –

Sir William Morris: But you are all members.

Mr Logan: We are members, but we are not involved in the process of decision-making and steering where the Federation is actually going, because we have given input to the Federation – a case in point was on the national arena, they were developing a poster campaign, and it involved a stereotypical image of a black person, and it was offset by some comments at the bottom.

We said it would not work, and we gave various suggestions of how to build on that. And they totally ignored it. In all honesty, they were again seeing it as our input sabotaging what they wanted to do. Because they had already made up their minds, when we gave our input, and it did not add to what they saw as the solution, they said, "Well, in all honesty, you sabotaged it". So what is the point of coming to us if you do not want to hear what we have to say?

Sir William Morris: But let me explore this with you. You are automatically a member of this organisation; you are dissatisfied because it is not addressing, shall we say, the racial dimension. The options are to seek to change it; if you are a member of an organisation, and you believe in it, you are part of it; it is not fulfilling the objectives which you think are important. So working and changing is one option, or option two is to do what you have done – not you personally, but what you and your black colleagues have done.

The reality, nevertheless, is that whilst you have taken your expertise away from that organisation, then they will never change, will they?

Mr Logan: Well, let me say we have never taken our expertise away. We are more than willing to assist wherever we can, and we still do that. In fact, in our support work – you know, over the years, the Federation have seen the value we add in the support work, and the expertise, and the outcomes as a result of our intervention that the Federation and the reps, especially on the constable branch board, work with us more often than not now, especially when it comes to Fairness at Work issues that involve race and equality. So they are actually seeing some changes.

Sir William Morris: But with respect, you are at the periphery; I would not say the margin, but you are at the periphery of that debate. But the issue of race and diversity has to be at the heart of the debate, and you have convinced a lot of people in the Met and in the country that the repository for that understanding, expertise and sensitivity lies with you and your colleagues, fundamentally because you are part of the victims.

It seems to me that if you take that expertise away and coalesce on the periphery, then this great organisation, which is not going to go away, where for generations more and more black people are going to be police officers, will never change; do you agree with my analysis?

Mr Logan: I would say that I have a different interpretation, and that is there is a selection process in the Federation which we believe is not open to the diversity you speak about, and we know various members of the Federation of black and other minority groups have not had the influence that they should have, over a number of years.

And then, as police officers in the Federation – and let me also state that police staff in the trade unions do not have that same sort of hostility, they work better, they do work better, but it is still part of the police service.

Now I look at comparators, I look at how the Federation receive our points of view, and how the senior management of the police service receive our point of view, and how they actually put their money where their mouth is; they support the programmes that we are developing, internally as well as externally.

We have worked with the Federation time and time again, and we say, "Listen, we have shown a business benefit, we have shown how we add value, we want to work with you, but not as silent foot soldiers, we want to work with you now to make the changes we all want to see".

Because I truly believe that if there was any way of doing so, we would have found a way of getting into the Federation much more, because I look at the collective experience of all the people involved in the BPA over the last ten years, and that collective intelligence, that collective community – some of them were long-standing Federation representatives, but they were not able to make the changes.

Dave Michael, one of the past chairs, he was a Federation rep for a number of years, but he was also chair of the BPA, so I think there is a clear example of where our voices are heard by the organisation, in terms of policy development for the wider piece of the police service, but in terms of the Federation, we do not get the same response.

Sir William Morris: Let me move you on to section 5 of your submission, reference MBPA 1/24. You refer to the evidence that we have already heard from some quarters, which suggests that line managers and supervisors are uncomfortable with issues of race discrimination leading to an escalation of disciplinary matters when black and minority ethnic staff are not effectively supervised.

You state that such an explanation, and I quote, is too convenient, and that discrimination continues to exist in an organisation that is institutionally racist.

Taking the converse view of that, the cynics could say that some officers from ethnic minority communities may use race to avoid discipline by their line managers. What would you say to those cynics?

Mr Logan: It might be they do not really understand the issues, because we have heard the red herring of the race card so many times. However, we have clear empirical evidence of case studies and testimonies that have been submitted to the Commissioner quite recently, and also in our submission, that shows that people actually will take more than they would normally do because they are trying to convince themselves, "No, this is not happening to me".

A lot of the times, they will approach us, whether they are members or not, when literally, they are at breaking point, and this is not just in certain boroughs or departments, but right across the organisation.

When you see people suffering like that, you think, well, what allows those outcomes? What, in a culture, does not stop someone from feeling that way? Is it because of the way in which they are supported, or discouraged? Is it around how they are appraised?

In one of the submissions, I think it is actually tied together by just one line, and it actually says, "My successes were undermined and my failings magnified", and for me, that has been a constant theme.

I truly believe it is because people are not held to account for those outcomes. If you had sanctions, if you had checks and balances, if the same intrusive supervision were focused on those hot spots of activity – and we can give you hot spots of certain boroughs, certain departments, doing a brilliant job, but we can also show you where other boroughs and departments are doing a less than appropriate job.

I do not know if anyone else wants to add?

Mr John: I would just like to add to that: I think it is important to remember that people approach us with their problems. We do not take on every single case, and certainly I know for my circumstances, I turn away most people. I am a manager myself, within an organisation that I have worked within for the last 18 years. And in that time, one would hope that it would be easy to spot when in actual fact someone is trying to play the race card.

This is not about those issues, but if someone is found to be exhibiting that behaviour, you must remember that it affects so many people, and so many people have fallen by the wayside; for every person that comes through to the BPA, there are another ten that did not.

We are trying to create an atmosphere of reconciliation which in a lot of areas and a lot of cases does not already exist.

Sir William Morris: Let me just pursue the held to account point that you made earlier. We have two views, the too convenient view, which is part of your submission, and the view that I offer in terms of what some cynics might say.

Let me say that whatever the cause, whichever of those views may or may not have credence, what do you see as the solution to the failure of the MPS to properly manage officers and staff from ethnic minority backgrounds?

Mr Logan: I just put myself in a position where I have run teams on boroughs, and specialist units, and I listened attentively to senior managers that have given evidence thus far, and one of the things that I find to be an area for improvement is how proactive you are.

I know certain managers are extremely proactive when it comes to the operational delivery, and they will ask questions, and they will sustain their supervision, they will be coaching, and they will be grooming, and they will be alongside as best they can.

But when it comes to Fairness at Work issues, welfare issues, they distance themselves, and that is when they lose the eye off the ball, that is when the early intervention does not actually – becomes consistent, that is when certain people absolve themselves of the responsibility to get out of their offices and find out what is going on, and be proactive in that, because it is all around leadership here. It is around people showing their leadership in all aspects of their professional and personal lives.

The big issue around race and equality and the diversity issue is not nine to five, it is 24/7, and I hear people talk about race and equality and diversity on a regular basis, and they want it now, but they do not have it in their homes, and I really think people need to understand this is a lifestyle, it is around everything that you do is second nature, respecting the individual, responding to their needs.

Not necessarily just responding to their demands, but what needs are important, and I truly believe you cannot just get that through training. I truly believe it needs to be a culture that identifies where a manager, a supervisor, a leader has taken their eye off the ball, and what we refer to as the diversity thread. Now, we have seen how the diversity thread can be developed through the diversity access model, as a means of assessing and reviewing on a regular basis, in the same way we assess and review our operational delivery, and making sure those people have direct input into internal welfare and external delivery of that department or that borough.

If you do not have that emphasis, then nothing is measured, nothing is done.

Sir William Morris: You seem to be making a qualitative distinction between operational behaviour and discharge of managerial function, operational, managing the operation, and managing the people or the office, managerial administratively.

For the point of reassurance, can you indicate to us, and I hope you are able to say that there is no evidence or complaint that incidents of racism are getting in the way of the highest possible standards of operational policing, or does it?

Mr Logan: I think we still have certain people who are racist in attitudes. They know how to style it out, they know how to look good.

Sir William Morris: Yes, but what I am seeking to establish is: does that inherent, latent or not, attitude of racism – does it affect operational policing?

Mr Logan: Well, I was going on to say it must do, if people have those attitudes. I mean, by definition, a lot of our values, attitudes and judgments are based on our own values, and if those values are warped in any way, then that must affect how decisions you make, the emphasis you place in your leadership style – how you manage your team, so it must play itself out.

What is important, though, is how the organisation identifies that, because we in the organisation talk about weeding out racists; that does not necessarily mean people leaving the organisation, it is around heightening that person's awareness as to how their personal values, attitudes and judgments can impact on their colleagues as well as the community.

Sir William Morris: Any examples, practical ones?

Mr Logan: Of heightening people's awareness?

Sir William Morris: No, of racism impacting on and manifesting itself in operational policing; any examples?

Mr Logan: I will give an example, actually, we gave to the Lawrence Inquiry, because we still see these sort of themes around this. It is when there was a rape suspect, and the description of the suspect was so vague that it actually included – I think it included about 50 per cent of black males in the country.

And you have to think to yourself: hold on here, if you are going to put a national circulation of a description like that, you have definitely missed some important issues around your own assessment; how have you assessed that information to then disseminate that sort of description, so vaguely that it would devalue and stigmatise?

Now I am not saying that everyone who has racist tendencies does that knowingly, they might not even realise it, because there is no one to challenge their thinking. If there was someone able to challenge the thinking of that officer, senior officer, to spread that information across the Met, then I would like to think they would have re-assessed it.

You need to have an environment where people feel safe, they feel confident to challenge the thinking of any person in the organisation, in an appropriate fashion, especially if they find those people have prejudices, and especially in a position of power, that will definitely lead to racism.

When you have an organisation that is institutionally racist, and they do not have a methodology of assessing where they are within that arena, and how to hold people to account, what sort of sanctions, and then, more importantly, what is the vision, that is when the organisation is floundering, and it is a dilemma, especially when it comes to internal welfare issues.

Externally, it is improving – a lot more to do – but we still have those dysfunctional impacts, in terms of stop and search and various other discretionary powers, and we are still seeing it internally.

I think Bevan has a point.

Mr Powell: I was just going to add to Leroy's points that conversely, diversity, we believe, brings operational effectiveness, so it brings added value to the operational effectiveness. Therefore, if we have no diversity within that, then by definition, it is ineffective, particularly when it comes to black minority of the communities, and we – the disparities, as Leroy has said, in terms of stop and search, disparities in terms of cautioning, et cetera.

Sir William Morris: Yes, but let us just take it down to street level for a minute. Are there any examples where an officer, black or white, has needed assistance and has not got that assistance in an operational capacity on the basis of race? This is street level stuff, when you are in the frontline –

Mr Logan: Alfred does the support work.

Sir William Morris: You require go back or forward, there is no way to go sideways.

Mr John: If I could give an example which will probably explain things a lot better, on how subtly these things affect operational capacity, on a particular occasion, and this has happened about three or four times, but on one particular occasion, a case was received whereby an officer had in fact been taken off some exemplary youth work that this particular officer was actually doing, due to an internal dispute.

On further investigation, it found out that in actual fact, the person who was in contention with this particular officer had in fact been the root of several other problems over a period of years.

Now to a lesser extent, the particular officer in question – not the victim but the so-called perpetrator – is a victim to that extent, because it is over a number of years that no one is actually pulling this officer up, no one to say anything whatsoever to this particular officer who was causing the problems, actually perpetuates the need for that particular officer to continue.

And over a period of years, the lines between right and wrong do get muddy, and it is displayed in the attitudes of these officers when you sit to try and explain, but it has only been born out of a number of years of exhibiting that type of behaviour with no challenge.

Sir William Morris: Okay, thank you.

Mr Logan: I actually have an example; it is actually in our undisclosed piece. I will not mention the officer's name.

Sir William Morris: No, sure.

Mr Logan: The evidence that we are aware of is that the supervisor of that officer looked at his own professional behaviour differently in comparison to his majority culture colleagues, and it was around his appearance at a parade.

However, there were some underlying issues that led to the way in which he was being dealt with, because he was served with a discipline notice because of his appearance at a parade, and he believes it was racially motivated because the way in which an issue had been dealt with on the street.

So it is not necessarily that he has challenged the organisation internally, but he has challenged externally how they dealt with an operational matter. I am being very tentative here, because I do not want to disclose the details of the person.

But it started to play itself out, not in responding to an assistance, because I would like to think my colleagues would not fail to respond to an officer in need of assistance, but it started to play itself out in the way in which misconduct issues were being focused on him, so he was challenging an operational matter, he was now being seen as a problem, and so he was being dealt with differently than his majority culture colleagues.

It started to develop into a form of intimidation, bullying, damage to personal property, and he actually reported it to his supervisors. Unfortunately, he was not getting the support he believed that was needed, and he came to us; as Alfred has actually stated, people come to us, trust me, because of our own primary roles. We do not go looking for business. We are proactive if need be; however, we have an increasing caseload, because they are not getting the support and encouragement within their boroughs and departments; in fact, it is quite the opposite, they are getting discouraged, they are lacking confidence in the system, and that includes the statutory support organisations and the unions that should be helping them. A lot of times they go to the Federation or they go to the unions, whoever that member of staff is, and they might not get the assistance they need, and because they see a shared and common experience in the BPA, they will come to us.

Sir William Morris: One of your organisation recommendations to us is for the appointment of an independent ombudsperson to oversee complaints and grievance in the MPS. Could you help us here, because we are not quite clear as to where the boundaries should be drawn.

Do you envisage, for example, such an ombudsperson having a role in relation to the formal disciplinary, investigatory role of the directorate for professional standards, as well as the Fairness at Work procedures, or it just would be limited to the Fairness at Work procedures? We are not quite clear precisely in what context you would see the role of the ombudsperson.

Mr Logan: I think the ombudsperson would have to take right across the piece, because in a lot of ways that early intervention in that Fairness at Work issue can actually prevent it going to an employment tribunal or a misconduct issue or whatever.

We are just reflecting on Lord Ouseley's report, he made two reports, and the second one actually highlighted the role of an ombudsperson, because I really think there needs to be someone sitting in judgment, as the checks and balances, within these issues.

Sir William Morris: But given, and you know better than I do, I am the learner here, but given that some aspects of the procedure are statutorily provided for, some aspects may even run into criminal proceedings, and we now have a new organisation today, the Independent Police Complaints Commission; if you divorce the Fairness at Work procedures just for the moment – we will come back to that – where would the ombudsperson's role start and finish from the directorate of professional standards, all the way through. Just take it chunk by chunk and help me here.

Mr Logan: Well, I must admit, I am reluctant to theorise, but I think –

Sir William Morris: Well, practically.

Mr Logan: Practically, I think we need someone who knows the system of the organisation, who knows the regulatory processes of the misconduct and discipline issues. It needs to be someone who is able to spot where the areas of concern are, and leaving the Fairness at Work issues aside, they need to have the clout to make it quite clear in the DPS that here is a case, through dip sampling, possibly, or the high-profile cases, and taking the recommendations of the Lancet review –

Sir William Morris: Hold on, an ombudsperson reaches a decision, and what you are describing is more supervision than decision, because the argument is that – you have time issues, you have a whole range of issues, and what we read in the context of this submission, the supporting paragraphs, indicates that the ombudsperson would be able to determine; we have set aside Fairness at Work, and just talk about conduct of the disciplinary process, which is there, you understand it and you know how it works; just apply your knowledge of how it works and share with us how the ombudsperson – not just supervising or checking, but deciding because that, by definition is what an ombudsperson is – it is almost a last resort, historically.

Mr Logan: Yes, but I truly believe the state of the processes within the organisation at this present time need an ombudsperson to look at the processes; I do not think they could just look at cases without knowing the processes, and I think some dip sampling would assist that person to know the processes, how it works; it is the nuances of it.

Having been involved in looking at the misconduct issue, how it is dealt with – not only just internally, but externally – it is important for that individual to have a clear understanding of the processes.

But more importantly, that person needs to be able to look at the case and give some clear, definitive – what they see as the solutions to assist the organisation. There needs to be systems that make sure that that person is in the loop, whenever a case is starting to create, you know, issues for the organisation; not just problems, but I think there are some valuable learning points for the organisation.

Now I see it is important for that person or a team of persons to be able to look at all stages of cases and, you know, give clear judgment on the merits of that case.

Sir William Morris: I mean, would you extend that to the Fairness at Work procedures as well?

Mr Logan: Well, it depends on the capacity and the resilience of that person or that individual, but I truly believe once you develop that sort of culture of checks and balances, and having external scrutiny for greater accountability and transparency, it will go all the way along the process.

Because what we are talking about here is around changing the structures to change the whole culture; we in the organisation have been working towards changing the culture, and hopefully that will have an impact on the culture – on the structures, rather, but for us, we need to have critical interventions to start to evolve the structures, and misconduct and discipline is definitely an area where we can have quick wins on that, quick wins for the clients, for the organisation as a whole.

I believe Alfred has a point he wants to add.

Mr John: If I could just add there, from the point of view of the Metropolitan Police, we are here to look at some of these problems, where our services are required to give some sort of justice to a given situation, but from the Metropolitan Police point of view, even the Federation, from the unions, they are at two opposite ends. You have the Met, who will be defensive, and the Federation and the PCS will obviously defend the people that come to see them.

Sir William Morris: We know the psychology. What we are looking at is the practicality. We are well-versed in the psychology. It is the practical step by step, that is what we are looking at, because at the end of the day, we are charged with writing a report, making a recommendation, and there is no point recommending propositions which do not stand up organisationally and structurally.

So this is a proposal, it is not just a narrative here, we are being invited to make this recommendation, and what I am asking is: could you please educate me as to how this recommendation could be practically applied within the context of the existing system? Where would it start? What would we need to change? The statute, the practice, the policies internally, in terms of the directorate here? We want step-by-step guidance on this recommendation if we are to explore it further. Is that clear?

Mr John: Yes, that is fine.

Sir William Morris: We know the psychology, we know the politics, we know the environment, we know the culture. But what we want is the practical step-by-step guidance as far as this – well, as far as all recommendations are concerned.

Mr John: As far as Leroy has intimated – what he has intimated is it is not just an easy situation to take out a particular part of the process and say, "At this point, this is when an ombudsperson will actually" –

Sir William Morris: All right, let me help you. Could you please let us have a paper, which you will have more time – you are right, you cannot just pick out a bit in the time available this afternoon, but can I invite you to let this Inquiry have a considered paper as to how an ombudsperson would work in terms of the conduct and disciplinary process as it stands today, as well as, if you wanted to, also including Fairness at Work.

Mr Logan: If I can say that Lord Ouseley's report, the second report does touch on that.

Sir William Morris: We read it.

Mr Logan: So we need to also be aware of – there is a need to reform the regulation, and I think the ombudsperson would have to be operating within that new reform piece, and I truly think that person would actually assist in that process.

So you need to give me a bit more clarity on where you would want the specifics of –

Sir William Morris: It is your recommendation, we know what the politics is, we know the culture, we know the psychology, we know the whole framework, the environment within which it goes. You know better than I do the existing structure. You are proposing a practical physical change. The onus and the responsibility is on you – your organisation, not you personally – to demonstrate, on a step-by-step basis, how this proposed new practical change would work in practice.

I think we should leave it there, because I am inviting you to submit further evidence on that particular recommendation.

Mr Logan: I was only seeking clarity, Chairman.

Sir William Morris: Fine, okay. Right, can I take you to paragraph 2.10 of your submission? You refer to the ACAS mediation model, and you have indicated that it is a model – or one similar would be of value and assistance. Would you see this as a permanent feature of the conflict resolution process within the MPS?

Mr Logan: Well, I will start and I will pass on to Alfred. Especially when it comes to employment tribunals, once an ET1 is registered with the employment tribunals, the ACAS facility is offered, statutorily.

Sir William Morris: Sure.

Mr Logan: I do not think it has been used effectively; so we are not reinventing the wheel here, all we are saying is let us use that process more effectively, because we have seen a speedy turnover of long-standing employment tribunals, and the majority of them have developed a resolution where all sides of the debate have agreed.

Now just by the fact that we have been able to kick-start that process, which has been sitting there lying dormant for a number of years, that we believe the ACAS process is worthy of note, and to be utilised more effectively and consistently, hopefully from the learning points that we have developed with the diversity directorate through Commander Allen working with us closely, and with the Met Police authority.

I do not know if you want to add, Alfred?

Mr John: I totally endorse that. We need only look at the success rates over the last few months over these long-standing cases to know that it has made a significant difference.

We do appreciate the Met's position, in that it would be a defensive one, purely because of the fact that they are not in a position to be impartial. They are the respondents, and they are in the same position as the applicant. Having that independence there not only helps the process but it also adds integrity to the decisions that are finally made, and that is the salient point.

Sir William Morris: Okay, let us take this practically. Mr Logan is absolutely correct, it is part of the statutory process that once you lodge the ET1, ACAS is involved, they have a mandatory duty, they see it as part of conciliation. What we want to be clear about is whether you are arguing for ACAS to have a more proactive role at that point, because ACAS comes in before you get into the tribunal, as ACAS, which is a statutory body; or are you arguing for some structure of mediation, and I will use your words, you describe it as mediation, and generally speaking, ACAS arbitrates, but we will not split hairs.

What I am saying is ACAS is already there, you can use ACAS as much as you wish, because they are a voluntary organisation in that sense, but are you arguing for a more active role for ACAS, or are you saying that some sort of mediation, a model – the same model but different organisations – we can create one, you can appoint mediators, or a panel of mediators to assist and help, which perform, broadly speaking, the same role.

Again, we are looking for some clarity, whether it is ACAS you want or whether you want a mediation model, in which case you can have a model of a one person mediator, or a two or three person mediator, whatever.

Mr Logan: In our submission, we do talk about the role of ACAS in the Ali Dizaei case, and how that was extremely important in coming to a resolution around that, and how the methodology that we incorporated, calling in ACAS, to have – what they actually did was bring their skills of mediation into an environment where I do not think we are that skilled, or we have not developed those skills as we should, so they were able to give us some clarity as to the issues on specific cases.

In a lot of ways, they did, I suppose, hold the role as the judge and jury, to assist a decision to be made; not to make the final decision, but to say, "Listen, on the merits of this, you should consider going down the ET route or coming to some form of mediation".

So all we are saying is embrace the ACAS process within all these cases where they have not been used before, and take the lawyers out of it, and use the stakeholders, whether it is the MPS, the MPA, even the Home Office, to assist especially in those high-profile cases that are creating so much damage for the organisation, in terms of staff confidence and community confidence. So that is all we are saying, is embrace how ACAS can assist – because they have the skills, their personnel have looked at these issues, and can give us value when it comes to decision-making.

I think Bevan wants to make a point.

Mr Powell: I think alongside that model, at the moment, at the top level of the model is informal review of the particular case, and at the moment, Commander Allen within the Met looks at that, and we believe that the Metropolitan Police needs to put more resources into that, because you cannot just have one person, you know, at a senior level, being able to review what could become hundreds of cases.

So a proper structure needs to be built in order to support the underlying ACAS model.

Sir William Morris: Yes. Let me just share with you part of our function, our prime function, and I hope you will understand what it is we are trying to do.

We are here to get evidence, we need absolute firm, clear evidence; that is the only purpose of the exercise. And from the evidence that we get, we hope to get some recommendations, that is why we are probing to have a very clear understanding of what it is that you are saying.

Because I have already said, and you know, that in every single case that is lodged at an employment tribunal, there is a mandatory statutory role for ACAS to try and conciliate – the extent to which they try and conciliate is up to the parties.

Now I am not sure in what capacity ACAS entered the arena on the recent settlements. It would be interesting to know in what capacity they entered, whether they entered for mediation, as has been indicated, or whether they entered just informally. That would be a very important point.

But if you set ACAS aside for a moment, just for a moment, forget the name, are you saying that you would find interesting or be supportive of a model which would have built in a mediation stage, as early as possible?

Mr Logan: Yes, absolutely.

Sir William Morris: That is what we want to be very clear about, because ACAS is a name, and the difference between ACAS and other names is that they have a statutory role along with other roles, and if they can do it, fine, but if they are not able to do it, then providing the model has the same objective for mediation, then basically that is what you want us to look at.

Mr Logan: I think it is worthy of further review, and we have the outcomes to show the added value that ACAS brings up.

Sir William Morris: Fine, well, we would be happy to have another half side of A4 on that as well.

I just have one point I just want to put, and then I think what we will do after this is to have a break, for the benefit of the stenographers.

I said right at the start of my introduction that we were not just interested in what is wrong with the Met, we wanted to hear what is right with it, but more importantly about what we need to do to make it better. It has also been suggested to us that, as any inquiry, we have an unenviable task, but be that as it may, we have to produce a report, and the report will affect your organisation as well as many other organisations.

You are the chair of the Met BPA, and you are aware of all the problems, but we are looking for solutions as well as problems.

If we were to invite you to write just one chapter of our report, what would it say?

Mr Logan: In the beginning ...

Sir William Morris: In the end ...

Mr Logan: I will actually start – because I know I am the chair, but I am very fortunate to have a team of very talented people, both police officers and police staff, as part of the team, and the wider membership, let me add, because they have actually put themselves above the parapet to challenge not only at the strategic level but at the local level, wherever they may operate.

So I have not got the total vision here, because it is a collective intelligence, a collective wisdom. But if there was an emphasis on a chapter, my chapter would start around: why do we want to have a diverse organisation? Do we truly understand what that is for?

Because I hear about targets, and I welcome them, as long as everyone is cognisant of why we want to have a diverse workforce.

My chapter would be saying, well – and I will ask my colleagues to comment; we need to change the environment of the organisation so that we actually attract people from all communities, and the Met Police and other police areas across the country will be seen as employers of choice.

We need to acknowledge that we all have a role to play, personally and collectively. It is not different hats we wear, it is or should be through our entire being, because if we approach our task collectively, understanding the added value that we all contribute to improve that environment, then I truly believe we will start to acknowledge assistances where they are given, and not seeing them as problems.

I know we have respect in the BPA – a lot of people respect us grudgingly, because they know that we assist, they know that we add value, but they still do not really acknowledge what we are here for, and that is to move the organisation on to be embracing the diverse workforce more efficiently and effectively, and so deliver a more effective and efficient service to the community, that diverse community, whether it be London or any other town or city in this country.

So that is what my chapter would be talking about. We are talking about hearts and minds, and I know there is a lot of very talented people in this organisation, which we are all proud to be a part of, but there would be so much more if they were talking with their heart as well as their head, because then, by definition, you would be understanding of all these issues we are talking about – I am not saying there would be total utopia, I do not think we will ever get that, in my lifetime anyway, but I would like to think that we start to utilise the legislation, like the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, we start to utilise the Human Rights Act, we start to utilise all these processes and practices in a more efficient way, so that we do not have these re-occurring cases, because the case of Gurpal Virdi is superimposed by the case of Ali Dizaei, and so forth, and then we have the smaller cases which do not have the high profile, and they are people suffering.

We are talking about people suggesting suicide, so we are dealing with people's lives here, and I do not think anyone is underestimating it, but they need to be sitting in our seats, and standing in our shoes, to know what is happening, because I heard a submission earlier this week where if someone can bring the evidence to me, I will do something about it; it is not like that, you need to be getting out of your office and finding out exactly what is happening in your organisation, in your teams, and do not underestimate the capacity for people to style things out, that it all is well.

You have to get behind all the spin and really find out the substance; that is my chapter. But I have enough work from you, sir, so I will leave it at that.

Sir William Morris: Okay. I could comment, but I will not. Anyway, thank you for that. We will adjourn now for about five or so minutes. Could members of the public please remain seated while the witnesses leave the room if they want to, thank you.

3.20 pm
(A short break)
3.27 pm

Sir William Morris: Right, welcome back. Could I ask Miss Weekes to just pick up from where I left off with her range of questions?

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much. Mr Logan and your colleagues, good afternoon. I would like to deal with three topics: Fairness at Work will be the first; then I would like to deal with changing attitudes and changing the culture. The third will be gender.

But before I start my topics, may I pick up one topic from the chairman, which were his questions in relation to the stance that your organisation has taken in relation to the Federation?

On a similar vein, and it is not my intention to discuss the case, but to discuss the decision that your organisation took, and it was the boycott which was a recent decision. We all now know that the boycott was ended the day this Inquiry began, but I would like your comments and assistance, please, on this: it may be thought by some members of the wider public, possibly some members of the police force, black and white, that the boycott sent a very negative message as to what your organisation is about when it takes on the issue of making life better in the police force for visible ethnic minorities, and ensuring that you take with you white managers and white officers.

Can you assist?

Mr Logan: Well, let me say, first of all, that the decision for the boycott was a collective decision. It was done so reluctantly, but on the basis of a series of cases that had been put to the organisation, Federation and unions alike, and really not getting the action that was required. We were seeing people suffering.

We saw, through the Ali Dizaei case, again, how our organisation was being compromised, or attempts to compromise our organisation, over three years.

We have been highlighting the issues to all levels of the police service, not just in the Met, but right across the police, through the National Black Police Association, and we were not getting the acknowledgment that we had been highlighting since 1998, when we had the interim executive of the NBPA saying, "There is a backlash to the Lawrence Inquiry, there is a backlash to the recommendations in 1999, and we are seeing an increased caseload without anyone being held to account".

We now see a high-profile case involving Superintendent Dizaei, and you think to yourself, well, who is going to be held to account for this? Someone needs to capture all of the processes and practices that led to this situation where millions of pounds have been spent, and we – similar to everything that we do, we looked at a very, very thorough assessment, and the impact of it internally and externally, but in the end, it was a unanimous decision of our executive and our wider membership, in that it was drastic times, requiring drastic measures, to get the attention of the Home Office, the Police Authority, the management board, the various stakeholders who could really look at this issue once and for all.

Miss Weekes: Do you think you have got their attention?

Mr Logan: Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: In what way?

Mr Logan: Well, we got the personal intervention of the Home Secretary, he came to the NBPA AGM a week after that boycott was called, and he said personally he was going to intervene in some key issues that we had highlighted, the issue of Operation Helios, the way in which that was carried out, and the outcomes, at the expense of millions of pounds of public money; also, the long-standing employment tribunals that had been stalled by Liversidge.

We also wanted to look at issues regarding Hendon, which is supposed to be the centrepiece of excellence in police training terms, not only in this country, but I would suggest the world, because we have people from all over the world that attend courses at Hendon.

So here we saw the Home Secretary looking at this, and hopefully I am not misquoting, but he said he is going to make his presence felt, he is going to lean on people.

Now it was a wake-up call for everyone, and I know that we had an impact. It was not – you know, it was a negative impact for a lot of people, I understand, but the Secret Policeman programme vindicated a lot of the things we had been saying, that racism was alive and well, not only just as an institution, but also personally, and not so much on a personal level, and people challenge, but people were condoning it, and for me, condoning it is as bad as the perpetrator.

No one could say to us, "Well, you have underestimated it"; we said, "Welcome to our world, this has been our world for a number of years", and I truly believe you have certain interventions like that over a number of years, and it all happened at that specific point.

So I truly believe, you know, that it needed to be done at that time, and I truly believe we have got this Inquiry as a result of putting the pressure on certain people who needed to make a decision.

They may have done it some years down the road, or months, but I truly believe it was a catalyst towards this very point.

I know Gareth has a point –

Miss Weekes: Just before he does, can I just follow that through by saying this – and I again welcome your comments. You have got the Inquiry, we are going to make recommendations in our report, because that is part of our duties. These recommendations, if they work at all, are totally dependent upon a consistent, continued joint effort. Do we have that from you and your organisation?

Mr Logan: Absolutely. I think what is really important is that we all have our day jobs, we all have our primary roles. We live this because we have no choice. If we do not do it, no one else will, and I know a lot of people in the organisation might say, "We do not need you", but I know numerous people have benefitted from the points we have raised over the years, and we have evidenced that.

So we would be losing total focus if we did not focus on these recommendations, because in a lot of ways, and I do not mean to be flippant, this is our baby; we have given birth to this, and we are going to take care of that baby, to make sure it grows.

Miss Weekes: Your colleague wanted to add something.

Mr Reid: I just wanted to add clarity around this issue of the recruitment boycott. I think it is important for the Inquiry to understand that this was not just an issue of Ali Dizaei – his case indeed acted as a catalyst, but what it did was focused our attention and understanding on the issue of retention, maintaining a critical base, a critical mass of black police officers, police staff, within the organisation.

The emphasis with our organisation is on recruitment, and we are saying: how can we concentrate on recruitment when we are haemorrhaging, we are haemorrhaging badly? What are the causes of people leaving our organisation prematurely?

It was on that basis that we argued, well, there is little point in emphasising recruitment if we cannot keep the people that are already within it, it is in that context.

Miss Weekes: Okay, thank you very much. Can I turn to Fairness at Work, please? We are all, on the panel, particularly interested in Fairness at Work, not just because it replaces the old grievance procedure, but because this is the first step on the ladder to early resolution of disputes.

It is the most important aspect of the relationship of a police officer and police staff at work; am I correct?

Mr Logan: Yes, absolutely.

Miss Weekes: So can I ask you: what is the successful aspect of Fairness at Work since it has been introduced?

Mr Logan: Well, I will just start by saying that it has built on a lot of learning from the grievance procedure, and I would just like to emphasise that the grievance procedure was a direct result of those Bristol seminars, because the various working groups that emerged from those seminars in 1990 led to the development of that grievance procedure; again, members of the BPA were instrumental in developing that grievance procedure, and maintaining it, such as George Rhoden and Paul Wilson, very important in developing that. So there was a lot of learning that the Fairness at Work has built in.

I truly believe that it has taken the learning from that by speeding up the process, because the grievance procedure was painfully slow, and we found that people who were aggrieved in that process were being stigmatised, they were being burdened by the process, it was victim-driven.

We now have a process that the advisors can take a lot more ownership of this, and the burden is not down to the victim to be pushing and pushing and pushing. That for us is really important, and we are starting to see again a lot more of the issues the client is mentioning in their grievances being fed back into that borough or that department, so we actually are seeing some quick turnover of the learning.

Mr John: If I can just add to that, we have mentioned a lot about the grievance procedure, but the process of Fairness at Work, impartiality is imperative, and the old grievance procedure placed managers and victims in a very difficult position. It could be the same manager who also socialises with this particular person who is also charged with the responsibility of dealing with the grievance; that was a very difficult situation.

Fairness at Work has relieved managers of that particular responsibility and assigned it to somebody who is impartial; I feel that the scales of justice are balanced on a pivot of impartiality, and it was imperative.

As Leroy has mentioned, timescales have been reduced significantly, so it does not afford people to get entrenched. The problem is viewed, it is assessed with an aim to basically resolve this as quickly as possible.

I think also, one of the most salient points, it is also centrally controlled. The first stage of the Fairness at Work policy assigns somebody who is within that borough but not part of the management chain. The second stage cannot even be appointed by the borough and goes back to the Fairness at Work co-ordinator. That has to be a better way of dealing with things, certainly over the grievance procedure.

But I must add that these policies are only as good as those that wish or choose to apply it, and even the grievance process, there were some great points in the grievance process, but the timescales were lapsed because no one challenged them.

Miss Weekes: Do your membership as a whole think that this is a better way of doing things?

Mr John: Most definitely.

Miss Weekes: Can I just put to you what we heard very clearly from the Met trade unions from this morning? They are the trade union reps, as you know, for the staff side, and they represent some 12,000 police staff. They say they are most anxious to go back to a central pool of HR individuals dealing with it, to go back effectively to HR, because they do not find the independence of those who deal with Fairness at Work to be sufficient. What do you say about that?

Mr John: I do not agree with that. First and foremost, even in the statement, they do not have 12,000 members within the Met, they have less than 6,000, as far as membership is concerned. PCS is over 300,000-strong from other organisations.

Miss Weekes: It may be my mistake, I think I am quoting 12,000 as the figure of staff, but I understand that point.

Mr John: The truth of the matter is that I do not believe that the right way forward is to take away the imperative of managers to manage. The whole truth is that the Fairness at Work procedure gives us the opportunity and gives the Met the opportunity that managers out there will be able to deal with these matters properly. By dealing with it centrally, central staff do not sit with these staff to deal with disciplinaries. They will get a case – yes, they may remain independent, but getting out there, seeing what the circumstances are like, seeing what the environment is like, and having some control still maintained by local managers so that they become empowered to deal with these situations I feel is a much better system than actually dragging everything back centrally.

We have seen on regards to employment tribunals how things can get dragged out, we have seen over the last grievance process how things can get dragged out, and I believe we will go down that road again if we go back to a central system. Bearing in mind the weight, the number, the sheer volume of cases that come through, we will not have the resources to deal with it at a central point.

Mr Logan: I was just going to take the point of empowerment, because you have to go through that process to get those skills and abilities to feel confident in dealing with these matters, especially when it comes to complex matters of race, equality, whether it be – and gender issues, because I have heard time and time again around people feeling uncomfortable, "Well, you need to go through that uncomfortable process to get the learning, to get the confidence to apply your skills". So you cannot empower people, you have to give them the opportunities to develop their skills to become empowered to deal with these matters; no pain, no gain, that is basically it. You have to go through that difficulty to get the skills to develop and work, you know, on a practical basis.

Miss Weekes: Well, just help me with this, Mr Logan: there are some people in this world who are very good professionally at what they do, but the moment you give them a management role that involves personnel skills, they are hopeless. Now I think you will agree with me, genuinely some people cannot do it; what is your comment?

Mr Logan: I do not think anyone is not able to do it. Maybe they have not surrounded themselves with the right sort of people to get the information. It is like this group of people here; I do not have all the skills, but I know a person that does, and I know a person I can go to, and do not believe that you have all the answers.

Because we are an organisation that is so task focused, success driven, and it unfortunately reduces the inclination to ask, because some people think that shows weakness or a lack of credibility and experience, and I truly believe once you get over that and start saying, "Well, I do not have all the answers, let me go and ask certain people", whether it is within my team, in my department, or let me ask members of the community; you know, bring in some professionals on this. "How would you deal with this?" Then I can see them again developing.

It is not an overnight process, but start asking those questions, I am sure that will help that person to become better than hopeless.

Miss Weekes: Do you as an organisation tell us, as absolutely everybody else does, in every conceivable report I have ever written, that more training is needed?

Mr Logan: Not at all. Before Alfred jumps in, I do not believe training makes anyone a racist or a sexist, and I do not believe any training will reverse that. It is around people's awareness and understanding and sensitivity to the needs of people.

So I do not think we mention anything about a focus on training; what we hopefully will see is a proper assessment being made in those circumstances for that individual or that team, and where the gaps are, you assist, and if that developmental aspect can be assisted by training, then yes, but blanket-bombing training we question very, very heavily, because after Lawrence, one of the recommendations was community race relations training, millions of pounds spent, thousands of people trained, and I have to question: what are the outcomes? No one can answer us, because there was no evaluation done and no follow-up.

Miss Weekes: Put yourself in my position. Think again to what our role is and what our task is, to make sensible, robust, practical recommendations.

If I am to pick up your wording and put it into a recommendation, it will sound like this: no more training, we have had quite enough, we need awareness. What does awareness mean? How do I put that into practical recommendations? What do you mean by that?

Mr Logan: Well, you can go through various processes. I am going to bring in Bevan in a minute, because he has actually been doing that in a specialist operation role, but we need to start to develop tools to assist people, because we can put them in a classroom setting, very sterile, and say, "Right, go and deal with that", but I think there needs to be an ongoing process of evaluation and assessing your performance.

That is one of the reasons why we highlighted the diversity excellence model, because the excellence model is something that has been used in the organisation for a number of years, everyone can identify with that.

But if you start to have a degradation of the diversity issues, whether it be race, gender and so forth, and you actually have a qualitative assessment, so you are evaluating it all the time, you then start to get an understanding, more of an understanding of what needs to be done within your working environment.

It is not a question of just working harder on this, it is just to be a bit more sophisticated in how we develop an analysis of where the gaps are.

Miss Weekes: Give me two practical examples of how you want to take forward your recommendation that managers need to become more aware of issues that affect the way they manage, black and white staff.

Mr Logan: Before I pass on, I will just say what I do. I have used the 360-degree assessment, so you are getting assessments from not only your supervisors and your peers, but also from the rest of your team that you work with.

Miss Weekes: What are the criteria for the assessment?

Mr Logan: The criteria are normally based on your leadership skills, decision-making, communication, various planning and organising.

Miss Weekes: Have you suggested this to management?

Mr Logan: Well, it is actually part of the RUNGE leadership course, which has been running for some years.

Miss Weekes: Are they making assessments of managers so that you can see best practice developing?

Mr Logan: Well, there is no one that comes back to me and says, "Right, have you done your 360 recently?" Again, good idea, but who is following it up? I know that it creates the right environment for people to come back to me and say, "No, I do not agree with this, there is a way of doing this better". It then gives people that creativity and innovation that needs to be brought into the environment.

There is other tools, do you want to highlight on that?

Mr Powell: My role within specialist operations, for instance, what we have been able to do is to bring in business tools to help local managers to try and understand some of the diversity issues, not just in terms of people management, but in terms of their policies, their practices, their operational issues.

As Leroy mentioned, the diversity excellence model is a framework that allows managers to carry out local assessments of their working practices, the way that they manage individuals, the way they produce their policies and procedures, but alongside that, we also monitor which people are getting training, so that is aggregated, we look at which women officers are getting training, it is broken down by ethnicity, et cetera.

We have introduced a psychometric tool which the American military use to understand the probability of issues occurring within the workplace based on difference, so for instance, it is a psychometric tool, and it will look to see how cohesive particular teams are, it will look to see – it will ask questions to see whether or not – if you introduce somebody of colour or of a different faith, what would be the likely outcomes with that particular team?

Now this particular tool has been used on 1 million servicemen and women in the United States, so what we are trying to say here is there are business tools that we can bring into the workplace that local managers can use to understand the diversity environment that they are actually working within.

Miss Weekes: And have you been allowed to do that, and has it been successful?

Mr Powell: Certainly we have been allowed to do that within specialist operations, and we have put that forward to the diversity directorate which Commander Steve Allen heads up, and we are awaiting, really, a decision as to whether or not it will become corporate tools.

Miss Weekes: Okay. One of the issues – I wanted to deal with those general points, because I appreciate your organisation is not just about race, you obviously are including all the other wider issues of policing.

But if I can deal with an aspect of resolution of disputes that might include a race issue, you very kindly in your submissions sent us some examples, and of course the identity of individuals is not relevant, and they will not be used, but there was an example that struck me as being something that you could perhaps help us with.

Just for the benefit of the public, very briefly, this particular case study involved a group of officers in a briefing session being asked to wear a particular item of clothing, and this officer at that particular point in time did not have the item of clothing.

I do not know whether it is your view that if I identify the item of clothing it would disclose the officer's name? It would not, thank you. Well, I think it does help to show the public how this was resolved.

The order was long-sleeved shirts; an officer wore short-sleeved. But he was able, before going out on operational duties, to wear and obtain a long-sleeved shirt. Whilst on operational duties, he realised that some of his colleagues were not wearing ties; that was another requirement of dress. One or two officers smoked whilst on operational duties.

Back at the debrief, he received what you call a 162, which is obviously a complaint about his disobedience of an order, or rather the fact that he did not turn up at the original briefing with the correct length shirt.

Because no one else had received any comments about the non-wearing of ties, and because two days later, at another incident, other officers disobeyed a dressing order, he took the view that the service of the 162 upon him by the officer in charge of that group was marred with race discrimination, and he reported it to your association, or rather your association was told about his dilemma.

A Fairness at Work advisor was got on board, with one of your representatives, and of course the officer concerned; an initial discussion took place. This would have been the time to have an early resolution of that particular incident. It was not in fact resolved there and then, because everybody in that group agreed, because it contained an issue of race discrimination, it had to go up to the borough commander.

Now can I just stop there? First of all, where is the rule or statute that says you cannot informally deal with an issue that contains race? Where is it in the statute?

Mr Logan: It does not exist.

Miss Weekes: So why did everybody in that group agree that they could not resolve it, and it had to go up to the borough commander?

Mr Logan: Before I pass on to Alfred, I think that example is a very important one, because you would be surprised how that happens every day, and a lot of people do not hear about them, but the important thing is that again, you get everyone circling around with entrenched views, and there is a lack of objectivity being brought in to what are the real issues, and how can this be dealt with quickly to prevent further damage for the organisation.

Miss Weekes: Just a moment: how would you have resolved that within one hour? It could have been resolved in a hour, could it not?

Mr Logan: Oh yes.

Miss Weekes: How would you have resolved it?

Mr John: I know this case quite well. The moment that a 162 is issued, it is not a Fairness at Work issue, it can only be resolved by the borough commander, and that is why in that particular case it was not appropriate to follow the Fairness at Work. It was actually resolved informally, when in fact the decision was reversed, and the person that tried to actually issue the 162 was more liable for the 162 than anyone else, and he was issued that.

That was actually resolved very quickly, in fact it did not go to the borough commander in the end, it went just below him, but I would have been happy, as any other Fairness at Work advisor would have been happy to input and resolve that informally, but from the moment that a 162 is issued, our hands are tied.

Miss Weekes: Well, why on earth does it have to be so?

Mr John: I quite agree. One would actually argue in that particular case why in fact it actually got to a stage that way, but like I said, we had to deal with it in a particular way. If we did go by the letter of the law, it would be a three or four month investigation; as it turned out, it was resolved by the second meeting, which was not too bad, according to that, but it was a set of circumstances – I quite agree, mediation is much better. Informal chat, I believe, is essential to getting some of these problems resolved, but from the moment that certain processes are engaged, there are certain things that get blocked off.

Mr Logan: I think it is down to interpretation as well. Certain people will interpret it in a certain focused way, and they are not open to suggestions. They may have had the suggestion, but the formality kicks in, even though it could have been dealt with in other ways. So they have actually cut off their options. And it comes to a point of all these rules and regulations are there, but it is down to the individual to interpret them.

Miss Weekes: Forgive me, who is going to interpret it? Here there was a representative from your organisation who agreed, "Cannot do anything, it is out of our hands", everyone agreed. Now if we are going to make some sensible recommendations, what is it you would want us to do so that what I personally consider is an unfortunate case not to have been resolved within 30 minutes, let alone an hour, what is the recommendation? How can we kick-start much more informal resolution of things that – this may have ended up as an employment tribunal case, might it not? Now what is the practical recommendation?

Mr John: As we said all along, it is the intervention, it is the appropriate mediation. In that particular case, the actual person that was served with the 162 never knew anything about it until after it had been served; in other words, he was not spoken to about the entire incident until he saw the 162. That is where it went wrong.

Why discussion did not take place – and that is why it was reversed. Why discussion did not take place is actually quite common in the service, that a process is engaged before anyone has a chance to speak about it, and that was a prime example.

Miss Weekes: Well, as a representative group of some recognition within the Met, what would you say to your membership, your representatives who were asked to turn up to deal with these issues; what would be your guideline to them about informal resolution? Because no doubt another member of the Black Police Association might say, "I have got another 162, I am not going to resolve it". So what is the way forward?

Mr John: I still maintain that in actual fact, we still have to discuss – there is still a huge potential to resolve most cases by and through informal discussion, before those battle lines have been drawn up. But unless an atmosphere for reconciliation has been created, that will be very difficult.

Thus I said earlier that for every one person that comes forward, you will have ten others that did not feel comfortable enough to do that. In some of our submissions, we have actually demonstrated the price that people pay to even come forward, and unless that atmosphere for reconciliation is there, then basically it is almost as if the formal procedure is in fact the foremost; it should never be that. That is the culture.

Miss Weekes: What do you want to create this atmosphere, the correct circumstances, so people begin to informally resolve things?

Mr Logan: I think we need to start looking at some specialist personnel within the diversity directorate, having a practical lead and going on to boroughs to assist in, you know, these areas of concern. It needs boroughs to be understanding that they do not necessarily have all the skills to deal with it, so if they have some concerns on some issues, there are channels in which they can go straight to the diversity directorate and say, "Right, we have an issue", even if it is just telephone consultation or through e-mails, whatever, and get those specialists within the directorate or elsewhere to say, "Listen, we have looked at the merits of this and it needs you to review some of your actions".

So we are starting to see that with boroughs, they are calling us on the BPA to say, "Listen, we have an issue and we would like you to look at it", and we are welcome to do that. We have been able to influence a fair number of Fairness at Work issues that would have gone a totally different direction, and we will give our advice, but, you know, if our clients say to us, "Really, I have no alternative but to go down the road of an ET", then our hands are tied, but we will give that advice where it can, but I really think there is a need for the DCC4 directorate to look at this very closely.

Mr John: If I may just add to this, the point Leroy makes about specialist staff is very important. Dealing with conflict is, especially when it starts to get complex, a specialist task, but I must emphasise – we have had evidence from other people, I mentioned yesterday, there was Esme Crowther; we have staff like Esme Crowther with an extensive amount of knowledge that, quite frankly, are not utilised enough. They are able to give advice; they cannot enforce.

Miss Weekes: She would like a bigger budget, she would like more people, she has told us.

Mr John: And I would have to agree, we do have specialists, we do have skilled people, but when the case has become complex, their power is reduced to advice, and they themselves would tell you that the times that they have gone against advice has almost certainly resulted in an ET, and that is not the way to carry on.

We should have those key people. We speak in the Met about the right people doing the right jobs. Well, here we have the right people and they are doing the right jobs, but they have no teeth, and in certain circumstances, they need to be in a position to turn round and say, "Well, I appreciate your position on this, but I am afraid you are wrong, this is the way that you will have to do it". That does not take place.

And I feel that it is a waste to have such a resource sitting there that can only be used superficially.

Miss Weekes: You rate Esme Crowther's department? You would like to see her do more?

Mr John: Certainly, I think we have some very skilled people inside there, and I believe that we should be using those people more than we are.

Miss Weekes: It is very helpful to know that.

Mr Logan: What I would add, however, we do not agree with where it is actually sitting at the moment. We actually believe that department, when it moved from HR to the directorate for professional standards, we were really concerned about how that relocation would change the whole – it was like target hardening, it hardened the whole approach towards employment tribunals.

One thing I just want to clarify, obviously the 162 process is for police officers, but, you know, we are still seeing a lot of issues with police staff of this inflexibility.

Again, I am not trying to be downcrying police staff, but there is still a culture within a culture in that setting, and police staff will absorb more than most police officers will, and these things are still going on. We really need to be understanding of those differences for sworn and unsworn officers.

Sir William Morris: Well, I know you have read these transcripts as they come out, so you will know the evidence that has been given about the debate between officers and staff, and the difference between the terms of contract. Do you want to comment upon that now?

Mr Logan: I mean, I am not a specialist like the Federation on a lot of these complexities, but I think there needs to be a harmonising between sworn and unsworn officers for sure, in terms of employment law. I think there needs to be a cultural shift in how we appreciate police staff specialists, because unfortunately, there is still the perception that specialist police staff are not being listened to or acknowledged as fully as they should, because there is that cultural divide to some extent still existing, and sometimes police staff do not even put forward their suggestions, because they do not want the possibility of them being seen as being troublemakers, even though putting forward that suggestion would assist the process, and we have seen that through our case studies, where people are finding, "Well, it is best not to say anything, because I do not want to have a difficult life", and I can understand that.

Mr Powell: I was just going to add to the point that Leroy made: one of the special and unique factors about the Black Police Association is that it is made up of all staff, whether police officers and police staff. The points that Leroy has mentioned about putting forward ideas or having their voices heard, the BPA provides that mechanism, so that all staff, black staff, can have their voices heard, can have their creative ideas heard, and can be put forward at a policy board, and can be considered.

Miss Weekes: Can I move to the second of my topics, and it falls out of the first, really? It is the culture. Recommendations at the best of times often sit on a shelf and gather dust, and they are simply words, like lots of the policy documents which I know you live with.

It is clearly not easy for any public inquiry to make recommendations about how you change people's mindsets, attitudes and culture, and I know this is a topic that we could all debate until 10.00 tonight; I doubt you would have an audience. But if you had to tell me two things – I am going to make you tell me two things that you want us to consider which are high on your priorities, two things that will assist in the change of mindset, attitude, culture.

I have in mind – again I am dealing with management of staff; we have been told managers actually do not like to take on board difficulties with staff, because if it goes pear-shaped, and it goes against them, it goes on their record, and when they come up for promotion, it does not look very good.

The same thing happens with the race issue, it does not look very good, so that is why they hand it up the road. It may be the same thing when they deal with women, I know not, but it is all to do with fear, as I understand it. So I have on board that quick summary of the evidence I have read, and it is only quick, it is quite a complex topic, but what are your two issues, two aspects of the matter that you want us to keep on board?

Mr Logan: I will touch on one, and then I will pass on to Bevan. What I really think, in terms of the culture of the organisation, is making a mistake, a genuine mistake, is not necessarily a sense of failure. It is actually a part of learning. As I said before, the organisation perpetuates itself on success, getting it right first time, with the right people at the right time, great, fabulous, but do not try and hide areas where you get it wrong.

That is what we have to try and develop in the organisation; take away that climate of fear that if you get something wrong, you are not going to be chastised or seen to be less able than your peers, and so, you know, you are not going to try and hide it away from that specialist selection form because you do not want it to be seen as doing something short of the mark, or you want to go for promotion.

Because that hides so many – you know, that is where the bodies are buried, in people hiding things, unfortunately. Until we develop that climate where even if you make a genuine mistake, and people actually acknowledge that, and the steps you have taken to try and prevent that, it is not seen as a failing; I think that is a genuine step.

Now that again is the hearts and minds of people's attitudes towards each other, and I truly believe that is one of the things we could start doing.

Miss Weekes: How do you make or how do you convince a majority male management group that they should be less hard, less macho, less male and say, "Well, sorry, I did get that bit wrong, and I take on board your views about improvements for the future"; how on earth does a recommendation get to that?

Mr Logan: One of the things that we have submitted in our paper is around affirmative action; start changing the scenery. That changes cultures, because we want to get away from the white male Anglo-Saxon boardroom, and having a more diverse boardroom, and start to see that permeate right throughout the organisation.

That is why we truly believe there needs to be a reflection not only of the community at the lower ranks but also throughout the ranks of police officers and police staff, and that is why we truly believe there is a debate to be had around affirmative action as it has been implemented in the police service in Northern Ireland since the Patten Report. We know it is government policy, it could be introduced here, and managed in a way that it is not seen as quotas, because we are not talking about quotas.

Do you want to add to that?

Mr Powell: My second point was Leroy's point, which is around affirmative action; we need a critical mass of people from various ethnicities reflecting London within the organisation.

The reason we say we need that critical mass is the issue around assimilation. We believe that if you trickle feed, as we are currently doing, then the difference that those people would bring into the organisation is, in a sense, suppressed by the majority culture, so we would argue – and we have recommended – Leroy said we do not use the term quotas, but we are asking for a 50/50 recruitment policy, as in Northern Ireland.

Miss Weekes: Well, a white manager who reads this transcript might say, "Oh right, I see, the Metropolitan Black Police Association want us just to pack this force with some more black people", and where is the merit?

Mr Logan: I think it is the people we are attracting. Unfortunately, we are not getting the people that can really add value to this organisation. I think we have some incredible people, who are willing to – you know, from black and minority groups, really going through some real difficulties, but still sticking in there and trying to move this organisation on, and the organisation is responding to some extent, but we are not getting young people who really could see the police service as an employer of choice. We are not getting those calibre, especially from black and minority groups.

We work with young people through our leadership programmes over the last four years, and they are striving for excellence, they are very empowered young people, but they do not see the police service for them, because they hear about how staff are developed and dealt with internally, and, of course, they receive a certain amount of service which affects their perceptions about the organisation.

When you start to see some significant changes in the make-up of the organisation, that is a significant impact, especially on people trying to decide, where is their career path.

For example, when Colin Powell was head of NATO forces, American recruitment of black African-Americans improved by 30 per cent. So role models are a very significant impact on changing the scenery of –

Miss Weekes: Do we have the details of your suggestions on affirmative actions within your submission – the detail, is it in the submission?

Mr Logan: In terms of practical implication? No, we have not.

Miss Weekes: I would very much like that. I appreciate it is another piece of homework, but rest assured, we will be here for a little longer.

Can I, if I may, move on to my last topic, which is the gender agenda? I have noticed, and it is an impressive line-up, but it is four men; where are the women who speak on behalf of your organisation? Well, the hands are up, but they are not at the table, they are in the audience. Why are they not at the table with you?

Mr Logan: A very good and important point, and I am not going to make excuses for not having women here at the table. However, I will clarify certain situations in terms of how we came through the process of developing our submission. We had very short notice in having to put some essential issues within a short space of time, and this is the subgroup that drew up the submission.

And it is a very daunting task; I must admit, I would like to see the sisters in the organisation being part of that process right from the very beginning. As I said, we have a women's forum that has been running for some time, and they are doing some excellent work.

Miss Weekes: Well, did you invite women to present with you this afternoon?

Mr Logan: I think it was like everything, we needed to – we as an executive discussed the whole process, and we have women on the executive, and we said, well, who are the people best placed to put forward our ideas?

I am not saying it is a perfect process, but it is the process that we as an executive did take forward.

Miss Weekes: But you will see the importance as to why I ask the question.

Mr Logan: Absolutely, yes.

Miss Weekes: When you allow women to sit in positions of high profile, and they sit at an important public inquiry, you are sending a message, which means you too believe in diversity.

Mr Reid: It is inexcusable, it is as simple as that.

Miss Weekes: Thank you. I am very grateful for that, can I thank you for that frank answer.

Can I in any event deal with the wider issues in relation to black women? Now I want to just bring up two pieces of work, and the first is Lord Ouseley, some time ago, in 2000, wrote a report where he considered the issues of diversity in the Met. Page 13 – if we can just find the right reference. Unfortunately, I have given our excellent document finder the wrong reference. I actually have it, I will read it to you:

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

There is one other reference, and it is your own reference, so although I have asked you the question about the non-presentation, not, I have to say, in your main submission did the issue of gender come up, but in the documents that you sent us, at your document page 13/123, there was one reference only to women in the whole of your documents:

"Ethnic minority women face triple discrimination on the basis of being police staff, ethnic minorities and female."

Now it is quite clear that the majority of women appear in the police staff area of policing; that is correct, because I know you are on top of the statistics. And in any event, when I looked at the last statistics – this is recent, I know they have been updated since February 2004, but in March 2003, within the ranks, there are 1,266 black visible ethnic males to 308 females from ethnic minorities.

The most senior black woman in the police force is a superintendent, o

Skip Navigation \| Accessible

Accessibility About the Inquiry Contacts Search
Home News Schedule Transcripts Evidence Report Links
Transcripts > Metropolitan Black Police Association (01 Apr 04)
QuickSearch See also On this website: Evidence: Metropolitan Black Police Association Transcript: Metropolitan Black Police Association (7 June 2004)	Previous Next	Views Print Accessible Actions Send
	Archive note Important note: This is an archive of the website that was formerly at www.morrisinquiry.gov.uk. It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information. Page summary This resource is from the Transcripts section. This section contains a transcript of the public session with Mr B Powell and Mr L Logan of the Metropolitan Black Police Association on 1 April 2004. Sections available here: Transcript of public session: Mr L Logan, Mr B Powell, Mr A John and Mr G Reid of the Metropolitan Black Police Association Questions by Sir William Morris Questions by Miss Weekes Further questions by Sir William Morris Questions by Sir Anthony Burden Alternative versions This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering. Content Transcript of public session: Mr L Logan, Mr B Powell, Mr A John and Mr G Reid of the Metropolitan Black Police Association Thursday, 1 April 2004 2.05 pm Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone. We are just on the point of reconvening for the afternoon, and we are taking evidence from the Metropolitan Black Police Association. Mr Logan, good afternoon to you, and indeed your colleagues. Can I first of all say thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and for letting us have your written submission which we found extremely helpful. I appreciate that for some of our witnesses, any process of this nature may seem somewhat daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I set out very briefly how we propose to conduct the hearing this afternoon. But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of my panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you can see, I have two other members of the panel; on my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of South Wales Constabulary, after a very long and distinguished career in the police service. On my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC; Anesta is an eminent barrister who sits as a recorder and part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry. Mr Logan, 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. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation, and not the individuals who make up that organisation. Let me say, as I have said on each and every occasion that we introduce witnesses, that the inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial and not, by nature or character, adversarial. We are very keen to enquire into the issues which are raised in our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendation for further good practice, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the MPS as an organisation, or particular individuals in it. To help us in our task, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Met but what is right with it; but most importantly, we are seeking suggestions as to how matters can be put right in order to make the Metropolitan Police Service better. For the record, a transcript is being taken, so that we have a proper record of the evidence given by witnesses. This will be posted on our website later today. At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, Miss Weekes first, and then followed by Sir Anthony, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment if you so wish. You have in your submission posted to us a number of very important pointers. The submission itself, as I have already said, will be on the website as part of your evidence, but you have set out for us informations under a whole range of headings. For the record, I will just refresh certainly my memory about what they are. Firstly, you have set out the aims of the MBPA, and you have outlined your work initiatives. You say to us the MBPA views on the deficiencies in the policies, practices and procedures of the Met, relating to complaint, both external and internal, and you have indicated views on the Fairness at Work and the resolution of employment claims. You have highlighted specific concerns relating to the MPCA's handling of investigations, and finally, throughout your submission, you have helpfully included a number of recommendations that you believe will resolve the issues identified. We would like to ask you some questions about the materials that you have offered to us, and any other matters relating to our terms of reference, but before we raise these issues with you, however, for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder whether you would formally introduce yourself to the Inquiry, and of course your colleagues. Mr Logan: Yes, thank you, chair. I am Leroy Logan, chairman of the Black Police Association in the Metropolitan Police Service. I am accompanied by Bevan Powell, the general secretary, together with Gareth Reid and Alfred John, who are the support co-ordinators of our support network. Sir William Morris: Mr Logan, before I move to my questions, let me place on the record the following statement. I know that you are familiar with the terms of reference of this Inquiry. As you are aware, one aspect of our task is to examine the lessons to be learned from high-profile cases. These cases, by definition, relate to individuals, and will be dealt with in the same way as the submissions that we have received from a number of other individuals. We have not yet reached that part of our work, and therefore today we will not be asking questions about any of the high-profile cases that we will be considering at some point in the future. We will, of course, notify the parties concerned when we have reached that stage of the Inquiry, and we make seek your assistance again on that point. Questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: Turning to my first question, let me say that I am interested in exploring whether the Met BPA is solely an organisation of police officers working for and on behalf of police officers and staff, or whether you have a campaigning role, a strong campaigning role with links and an agenda in the community; perhaps you can help to expand and enlighten our thoughts in respect of your organisation. Mr Logan: As a founder member of the Metropolitan Black Police Association, together with members here in the audience, I recall our initial meeting in April 1993, and it was clear that we had a welfare and support role within the Met Police, but also to echo the concerns and issues of the black community that we are a part of: when I use the term black, as in our submission, I refer to the shared and common experience of people from African, African-Caribbean and Asian origins; it is not an assessment of colour. So in effect, we have a wide brief, supporting and focusing on the welfare issues within the personnel of the Met, as well as building bridges, strong partnerships with the black community, especially the hard to hear groups, which we refer to; not hard to reach, because we believe there are certain groups who would want to hear more from the Met, and also would like to make sure their voices are heard, and that is one of the reasons why we have an internal as well as an external focus. Sir William Morris: The Met BPA is one of 14 support groups within the Metropolitan Police Service. Why do officers of the MPS need support groups when your members are all members of a very long established, statutorily supported trade union, it is called the Federation; why are support groups necessary? Mr Logan: Well, let me emphasise in the first instance that the BPA is a rankless, gradeless organisation, made up of police officers as well as police staff, and it was as a result of the challenges and barriers that we had faced for a number of years which were put to the Federation for police officers, and the trade unions for police staff. I truly believe it started from the 1970s, when that small nucleus of officers came together, and tried in their own ways to make changes within their own working environment, but the real catalyst was the Bristol seminars in 1990, where black officers were required to attend two-day seminars looking at the high resignation rates at that time. There was a parallel process with police staff, they had a similar facilitated process, and those issues were like mirror images, and that is when we came together, from 1990 to 1993, and it was normally in a social setting; it was not only for us as personnel, but also with members of the community. After three years of these various staff support processes, we then started to attract the community, and we thought, well, we have to do something about this. We would start to see solidarity, people identifying with us working in the police service, whether it be sworn or unsworn officers. As a result of that, we said quite clearly that these issues that we have raised for so many years were not being addressed; not necessarily that people do not want to deal with it, I think it was also around they may not have the tools to deal with it, because a lot of our input in all of this is our life skills. As I said, we are part of the black community, and we are able to use those experiences, those softer skills in every aspect of our work, but if we find that because of our diversity we are not being supported, we are not being assisted in a way that it should be, then we feel it, we know it, we have to do something about it. That is the ethos of the BPA, highlighting the areas of concern, and making sure that we focus on them, and we have made it quite clear from the beginning, we are not a statutory union or federation, we are a staff support association with a unique and authoritative voice on issues of race and equality, because of our experience and our struggles. Sir William Morris: Do you see yourselves as a competitor? Mr Logan: I do not see us as a competitor, I see us adding value to these various federations and unions; I see us adding value to the processes and practices of the organisations, but not just to steer and advise, which we have been doing for many years, but also to develop our own policies, and that is why we have developed, within the organisation, the communities and cultural resource unit, which helps to enhance operational delivery in critical and serious major incidents, by having closer contact with communities who normally would not engage in police activities, and that was highlighted in the Damilola Taylor investigation. We have also developed our community engagement and community empowerment programmes; again, because of the fact that is being conceived, developed and implemented by black personnel, we are able to develop stronger and more sustained programmes, and develop a methodology that can be replicated elsewhere, that has created some phenomenal outcomes, and I will just touch on one. Earlier this week, one of our youth forum, the young black positive advocates, was shadowing the Commissioner. Two years ago, that young lady would not even think about speaking to a police officer, much less shadow the Commissioner, and it was because we created the right environment for them to know the skills in themselves, capacity building, develop self-esteem and confidence to operate outside their environment, and not become their environment, and as such, they are able to influence and challenge the thinking of various public and private organisations, and the people of authority in those organisations, and consequently, they feel confident to say to the Commissioner, "I would like to spend one or two days with you". In the debrief that young lady had with the Commissioner, he actually – it was a fresh approach, a breath of fresh air for that young lady, that he said he wants her to be visiting him regularly, and in fact, she is going places where I have not been able to go, or my colleagues have not been able to go in the last 20 years. Sir William Morris: We have taken evidence from the Federation both at Met level and national level. Can you describe for us the MBPA's relationship with the Federation at Met level? Mr Logan: Well, even before we launched in September 1994, I remember there was a volley of hostile press statements, that we were breaking up the organisation, we were a splinter group, we were there to disrupt and not to assist, and there were certain pundits who were involved in the Federation at that time, and I think that created an uneasy – there was an inertia, and there was a distancing. Because we thought that our aims and objectives were laudable, we were not hiding, we were not in any way holding back from what we saw as important; we kept the Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, informed of what we were doing. In all honesty, I think by their reaction, we were not surprised, because I think it was, for them, a mission of failure, because we are highlighting issues which they should have been addressing, in terms of race and equality. I truly believe that legacy has continued, because we have not got that closeness that we should do, but we are saying, "We are not silent partners in this, we believe we should have strategic alliances within the Federation as equal in terms of what we add to the issues of race and equality and staff development, and working effectively for the community of London". Now as a result of that, they still have a certain amount of difficulty in accepting us on that equal playing field. They are saying, well, you could join the Federation and come up through the ranks. Unfortunately, the culture of the organisation does not allow that. One of the things is, in terms of the Federation for police officers, we do not feel confident to even put ourselves forward, because we are relying on our majority culture colleagues to vote us in. So we actually deselect ourselves from the first instance. Then also, we find that we are again hugging the lower ranks of the Federation, and are not going to influence the strategic issues that are impacting on us all, so in a lot of ways, we find that that is not the best way forward for us. I do not know if Bevan wants to mention anything, in terms of the specific police staff side? Mr Powell: I think a number of the issues that Leroy has highlighted equally apply to the police staff, in terms of issues of race not being adequately addressed by the unions, and as Leroy said, through our common experience of being members of the black community, we believe that many of these issues we can tackle more effectively. Sir William Morris: Apart from the issues of race, is there any other issues, policy issues, organisational issues, structural issues, around which you take issue with the Federation? Mr Logan: Well, in all honesty, we believe that as an organisation, we should be reflecting diversity throughout, and I think the Federation should be reflecting that, and the unions should be reflecting that, so by definition, they do reflect a strong monocultural emphasis, and I truly believe they are at a disadvantage by being in that position. I remember some years ago being interviewed publicly on this matter, and I said the Federation reflect an institutionally racist organisation within themselves, because they do not have a positive action process – Sir William Morris: But you are all members. Mr Logan: We are members, but we are not involved in the process of decision-making and steering where the Federation is actually going, because we have given input to the Federation – a case in point was on the national arena, they were developing a poster campaign, and it involved a stereotypical image of a black person, and it was offset by some comments at the bottom. We said it would not work, and we gave various suggestions of how to build on that. And they totally ignored it. In all honesty, they were again seeing it as our input sabotaging what they wanted to do. Because they had already made up their minds, when we gave our input, and it did not add to what they saw as the solution, they said, "Well, in all honesty, you sabotaged it". So what is the point of coming to us if you do not want to hear what we have to say? Sir William Morris: But let me explore this with you. You are automatically a member of this organisation; you are dissatisfied because it is not addressing, shall we say, the racial dimension. The options are to seek to change it; if you are a member of an organisation, and you believe in it, you are part of it; it is not fulfilling the objectives which you think are important. So working and changing is one option, or option two is to do what you have done – not you personally, but what you and your black colleagues have done. The reality, nevertheless, is that whilst you have taken your expertise away from that organisation, then they will never change, will they? Mr Logan: Well, let me say we have never taken our expertise away. We are more than willing to assist wherever we can, and we still do that. In fact, in our support work – you know, over the years, the Federation have seen the value we add in the support work, and the expertise, and the outcomes as a result of our intervention that the Federation and the reps, especially on the constable branch board, work with us more often than not now, especially when it comes to Fairness at Work issues that involve race and equality. So they are actually seeing some changes. Sir William Morris: But with respect, you are at the periphery; I would not say the margin, but you are at the periphery of that debate. But the issue of race and diversity has to be at the heart of the debate, and you have convinced a lot of people in the Met and in the country that the repository for that understanding, expertise and sensitivity lies with you and your colleagues, fundamentally because you are part of the victims. It seems to me that if you take that expertise away and coalesce on the periphery, then this great organisation, which is not going to go away, where for generations more and more black people are going to be police officers, will never change; do you agree with my analysis? Mr Logan: I would say that I have a different interpretation, and that is there is a selection process in the Federation which we believe is not open to the diversity you speak about, and we know various members of the Federation of black and other minority groups have not had the influence that they should have, over a number of years. And then, as police officers in the Federation – and let me also state that police staff in the trade unions do not have that same sort of hostility, they work better, they do work better, but it is still part of the police service. Now I look at comparators, I look at how the Federation receive our points of view, and how the senior management of the police service receive our point of view, and how they actually put their money where their mouth is; they support the programmes that we are developing, internally as well as externally. We have worked with the Federation time and time again, and we say, "Listen, we have shown a business benefit, we have shown how we add value, we want to work with you, but not as silent foot soldiers, we want to work with you now to make the changes we all want to see". Because I truly believe that if there was any way of doing so, we would have found a way of getting into the Federation much more, because I look at the collective experience of all the people involved in the BPA over the last ten years, and that collective intelligence, that collective community – some of them were long-standing Federation representatives, but they were not able to make the changes. Dave Michael, one of the past chairs, he was a Federation rep for a number of years, but he was also chair of the BPA, so I think there is a clear example of where our voices are heard by the organisation, in terms of policy development for the wider piece of the police service, but in terms of the Federation, we do not get the same response. Sir William Morris: Let me move you on to section 5 of your submission, reference MBPA 1/24. You refer to the evidence that we have already heard from some quarters, which suggests that line managers and supervisors are uncomfortable with issues of race discrimination leading to an escalation of disciplinary matters when black and minority ethnic staff are not effectively supervised. You state that such an explanation, and I quote, is too convenient, and that discrimination continues to exist in an organisation that is institutionally racist. Taking the converse view of that, the cynics could say that some officers from ethnic minority communities may use race to avoid discipline by their line managers. What would you say to those cynics? Mr Logan: It might be they do not really understand the issues, because we have heard the red herring of the race card so many times. However, we have clear empirical evidence of case studies and testimonies that have been submitted to the Commissioner quite recently, and also in our submission, that shows that people actually will take more than they would normally do because they are trying to convince themselves, "No, this is not happening to me". A lot of the times, they will approach us, whether they are members or not, when literally, they are at breaking point, and this is not just in certain boroughs or departments, but right across the organisation. When you see people suffering like that, you think, well, what allows those outcomes? What, in a culture, does not stop someone from feeling that way? Is it because of the way in which they are supported, or discouraged? Is it around how they are appraised? In one of the submissions, I think it is actually tied together by just one line, and it actually says, "My successes were undermined and my failings magnified", and for me, that has been a constant theme. I truly believe it is because people are not held to account for those outcomes. If you had sanctions, if you had checks and balances, if the same intrusive supervision were focused on those hot spots of activity – and we can give you hot spots of certain boroughs, certain departments, doing a brilliant job, but we can also show you where other boroughs and departments are doing a less than appropriate job. I do not know if anyone else wants to add? Mr John: I would just like to add to that: I think it is important to remember that people approach us with their problems. We do not take on every single case, and certainly I know for my circumstances, I turn away most people. I am a manager myself, within an organisation that I have worked within for the last 18 years. And in that time, one would hope that it would be easy to spot when in actual fact someone is trying to play the race card. This is not about those issues, but if someone is found to be exhibiting that behaviour, you must remember that it affects so many people, and so many people have fallen by the wayside; for every person that comes through to the BPA, there are another ten that did not. We are trying to create an atmosphere of reconciliation which in a lot of areas and a lot of cases does not already exist. Sir William Morris: Let me just pursue the held to account point that you made earlier. We have two views, the too convenient view, which is part of your submission, and the view that I offer in terms of what some cynics might say. Let me say that whatever the cause, whichever of those views may or may not have credence, what do you see as the solution to the failure of the MPS to properly manage officers and staff from ethnic minority backgrounds? Mr Logan: I just put myself in a position where I have run teams on boroughs, and specialist units, and I listened attentively to senior managers that have given evidence thus far, and one of the things that I find to be an area for improvement is how proactive you are. I know certain managers are extremely proactive when it comes to the operational delivery, and they will ask questions, and they will sustain their supervision, they will be coaching, and they will be grooming, and they will be alongside as best they can. But when it comes to Fairness at Work issues, welfare issues, they distance themselves, and that is when they lose the eye off the ball, that is when the early intervention does not actually – becomes consistent, that is when certain people absolve themselves of the responsibility to get out of their offices and find out what is going on, and be proactive in that, because it is all around leadership here. It is around people showing their leadership in all aspects of their professional and personal lives. The big issue around race and equality and the diversity issue is not nine to five, it is 24/7, and I hear people talk about race and equality and diversity on a regular basis, and they want it now, but they do not have it in their homes, and I really think people need to understand this is a lifestyle, it is around everything that you do is second nature, respecting the individual, responding to their needs. Not necessarily just responding to their demands, but what needs are important, and I truly believe you cannot just get that through training. I truly believe it needs to be a culture that identifies where a manager, a supervisor, a leader has taken their eye off the ball, and what we refer to as the diversity thread. Now, we have seen how the diversity thread can be developed through the diversity access model, as a means of assessing and reviewing on a regular basis, in the same way we assess and review our operational delivery, and making sure those people have direct input into internal welfare and external delivery of that department or that borough. If you do not have that emphasis, then nothing is measured, nothing is done. Sir William Morris: You seem to be making a qualitative distinction between operational behaviour and discharge of managerial function, operational, managing the operation, and managing the people or the office, managerial administratively. For the point of reassurance, can you indicate to us, and I hope you are able to say that there is no evidence or complaint that incidents of racism are getting in the way of the highest possible standards of operational policing, or does it? Mr Logan: I think we still have certain people who are racist in attitudes. They know how to style it out, they know how to look good. Sir William Morris: Yes, but what I am seeking to establish is: does that inherent, latent or not, attitude of racism – does it affect operational policing? Mr Logan: Well, I was going on to say it must do, if people have those attitudes. I mean, by definition, a lot of our values, attitudes and judgments are based on our own values, and if those values are warped in any way, then that must affect how decisions you make, the emphasis you place in your leadership style – how you manage your team, so it must play itself out. What is important, though, is how the organisation identifies that, because we in the organisation talk about weeding out racists; that does not necessarily mean people leaving the organisation, it is around heightening that person's awareness as to how their personal values, attitudes and judgments can impact on their colleagues as well as the community. Sir William Morris: Any examples, practical ones? Mr Logan: Of heightening people's awareness? Sir William Morris: No, of racism impacting on and manifesting itself in operational policing; any examples? Mr Logan: I will give an example, actually, we gave to the Lawrence Inquiry, because we still see these sort of themes around this. It is when there was a rape suspect, and the description of the suspect was so vague that it actually included – I think it included about 50 per cent of black males in the country. And you have to think to yourself: hold on here, if you are going to put a national circulation of a description like that, you have definitely missed some important issues around your own assessment; how have you assessed that information to then disseminate that sort of description, so vaguely that it would devalue and stigmatise? Now I am not saying that everyone who has racist tendencies does that knowingly, they might not even realise it, because there is no one to challenge their thinking. If there was someone able to challenge the thinking of that officer, senior officer, to spread that information across the Met, then I would like to think they would have re-assessed it. You need to have an environment where people feel safe, they feel confident to challenge the thinking of any person in the organisation, in an appropriate fashion, especially if they find those people have prejudices, and especially in a position of power, that will definitely lead to racism. When you have an organisation that is institutionally racist, and they do not have a methodology of assessing where they are within that arena, and how to hold people to account, what sort of sanctions, and then, more importantly, what is the vision, that is when the organisation is floundering, and it is a dilemma, especially when it comes to internal welfare issues. Externally, it is improving – a lot more to do – but we still have those dysfunctional impacts, in terms of stop and search and various other discretionary powers, and we are still seeing it internally. I think Bevan has a point. Mr Powell: I was just going to add to Leroy's points that conversely, diversity, we believe, brings operational effectiveness, so it brings added value to the operational effectiveness. Therefore, if we have no diversity within that, then by definition, it is ineffective, particularly when it comes to black minority of the communities, and we – the disparities, as Leroy has said, in terms of stop and search, disparities in terms of cautioning, et cetera. Sir William Morris: Yes, but let us just take it down to street level for a minute. Are there any examples where an officer, black or white, has needed assistance and has not got that assistance in an operational capacity on the basis of race? This is street level stuff, when you are in the frontline – Mr Logan: Alfred does the support work. Sir William Morris: You require go back or forward, there is no way to go sideways. Mr John: If I could give an example which will probably explain things a lot better, on how subtly these things affect operational capacity, on a particular occasion, and this has happened about three or four times, but on one particular occasion, a case was received whereby an officer had in fact been taken off some exemplary youth work that this particular officer was actually doing, due to an internal dispute. On further investigation, it found out that in actual fact, the person who was in contention with this particular officer had in fact been the root of several other problems over a period of years. Now to a lesser extent, the particular officer in question – not the victim but the so-called perpetrator – is a victim to that extent, because it is over a number of years that no one is actually pulling this officer up, no one to say anything whatsoever to this particular officer who was causing the problems, actually perpetuates the need for that particular officer to continue. And over a period of years, the lines between right and wrong do get muddy, and it is displayed in the attitudes of these officers when you sit to try and explain, but it has only been born out of a number of years of exhibiting that type of behaviour with no challenge. Sir William Morris: Okay, thank you. Mr Logan: I actually have an example; it is actually in our undisclosed piece. I will not mention the officer's name. Sir William Morris: No, sure. Mr Logan: The evidence that we are aware of is that the supervisor of that officer looked at his own professional behaviour differently in comparison to his majority culture colleagues, and it was around his appearance at a parade. However, there were some underlying issues that led to the way in which he was being dealt with, because he was served with a discipline notice because of his appearance at a parade, and he believes it was racially motivated because the way in which an issue had been dealt with on the street. So it is not necessarily that he has challenged the organisation internally, but he has challenged externally how they dealt with an operational matter. I am being very tentative here, because I do not want to disclose the details of the person. But it started to play itself out, not in responding to an assistance, because I would like to think my colleagues would not fail to respond to an officer in need of assistance, but it started to play itself out in the way in which misconduct issues were being focused on him, so he was challenging an operational matter, he was now being seen as a problem, and so he was being dealt with differently than his majority culture colleagues. It started to develop into a form of intimidation, bullying, damage to personal property, and he actually reported it to his supervisors. Unfortunately, he was not getting the support he believed that was needed, and he came to us; as Alfred has actually stated, people come to us, trust me, because of our own primary roles. We do not go looking for business. We are proactive if need be; however, we have an increasing caseload, because they are not getting the support and encouragement within their boroughs and departments; in fact, it is quite the opposite, they are getting discouraged, they are lacking confidence in the system, and that includes the statutory support organisations and the unions that should be helping them. A lot of times they go to the Federation or they go to the unions, whoever that member of staff is, and they might not get the assistance they need, and because they see a shared and common experience in the BPA, they will come to us. Sir William Morris: One of your organisation recommendations to us is for the appointment of an independent ombudsperson to oversee complaints and grievance in the MPS. Could you help us here, because we are not quite clear as to where the boundaries should be drawn. Do you envisage, for example, such an ombudsperson having a role in relation to the formal disciplinary, investigatory role of the directorate for professional standards, as well as the Fairness at Work procedures, or it just would be limited to the Fairness at Work procedures? We are not quite clear precisely in what context you would see the role of the ombudsperson. Mr Logan: I think the ombudsperson would have to take right across the piece, because in a lot of ways that early intervention in that Fairness at Work issue can actually prevent it going to an employment tribunal or a misconduct issue or whatever. We are just reflecting on Lord Ouseley's report, he made two reports, and the second one actually highlighted the role of an ombudsperson, because I really think there needs to be someone sitting in judgment, as the checks and balances, within these issues. Sir William Morris: But given, and you know better than I do, I am the learner here, but given that some aspects of the procedure are statutorily provided for, some aspects may even run into criminal proceedings, and we now have a new organisation today, the Independent Police Complaints Commission; if you divorce the Fairness at Work procedures just for the moment – we will come back to that – where would the ombudsperson's role start and finish from the directorate of professional standards, all the way through. Just take it chunk by chunk and help me here. Mr Logan: Well, I must admit, I am reluctant to theorise, but I think – Sir William Morris: Well, practically. Mr Logan: Practically, I think we need someone who knows the system of the organisation, who knows the regulatory processes of the misconduct and discipline issues. It needs to be someone who is able to spot where the areas of concern are, and leaving the Fairness at Work issues aside, they need to have the clout to make it quite clear in the DPS that here is a case, through dip sampling, possibly, or the high-profile cases, and taking the recommendations of the Lancet review – Sir William Morris: Hold on, an ombudsperson reaches a decision, and what you are describing is more supervision than decision, because the argument is that – you have time issues, you have a whole range of issues, and what we read in the context of this submission, the supporting paragraphs, indicates that the ombudsperson would be able to determine; we have set aside Fairness at Work, and just talk about conduct of the disciplinary process, which is there, you understand it and you know how it works; just apply your knowledge of how it works and share with us how the ombudsperson – not just supervising or checking, but deciding because that, by definition is what an ombudsperson is – it is almost a last resort, historically. Mr Logan: Yes, but I truly believe the state of the processes within the organisation at this present time need an ombudsperson to look at the processes; I do not think they could just look at cases without knowing the processes, and I think some dip sampling would assist that person to know the processes, how it works; it is the nuances of it. Having been involved in looking at the misconduct issue, how it is dealt with – not only just internally, but externally – it is important for that individual to have a clear understanding of the processes. But more importantly, that person needs to be able to look at the case and give some clear, definitive – what they see as the solutions to assist the organisation. There needs to be systems that make sure that that person is in the loop, whenever a case is starting to create, you know, issues for the organisation; not just problems, but I think there are some valuable learning points for the organisation. Now I see it is important for that person or a team of persons to be able to look at all stages of cases and, you know, give clear judgment on the merits of that case. Sir William Morris: I mean, would you extend that to the Fairness at Work procedures as well? Mr Logan: Well, it depends on the capacity and the resilience of that person or that individual, but I truly believe once you develop that sort of culture of checks and balances, and having external scrutiny for greater accountability and transparency, it will go all the way along the process. Because what we are talking about here is around changing the structures to change the whole culture; we in the organisation have been working towards changing the culture, and hopefully that will have an impact on the culture – on the structures, rather, but for us, we need to have critical interventions to start to evolve the structures, and misconduct and discipline is definitely an area where we can have quick wins on that, quick wins for the clients, for the organisation as a whole. I believe Alfred has a point he wants to add. Mr John: If I could just add there, from the point of view of the Metropolitan Police, we are here to look at some of these problems, where our services are required to give some sort of justice to a given situation, but from the Metropolitan Police point of view, even the Federation, from the unions, they are at two opposite ends. You have the Met, who will be defensive, and the Federation and the PCS will obviously defend the people that come to see them. Sir William Morris: We know the psychology. What we are looking at is the practicality. We are well-versed in the psychology. It is the practical step by step, that is what we are looking at, because at the end of the day, we are charged with writing a report, making a recommendation, and there is no point recommending propositions which do not stand up organisationally and structurally. So this is a proposal, it is not just a narrative here, we are being invited to make this recommendation, and what I am asking is: could you please educate me as to how this recommendation could be practically applied within the context of the existing system? Where would it start? What would we need to change? The statute, the practice, the policies internally, in terms of the directorate here? We want step-by-step guidance on this recommendation if we are to explore it further. Is that clear? Mr John: Yes, that is fine. Sir William Morris: We know the psychology, we know the politics, we know the environment, we know the culture. But what we want is the practical step-by-step guidance as far as this – well, as far as all recommendations are concerned. Mr John: As far as Leroy has intimated – what he has intimated is it is not just an easy situation to take out a particular part of the process and say, "At this point, this is when an ombudsperson will actually" – Sir William Morris: All right, let me help you. Could you please let us have a paper, which you will have more time – you are right, you cannot just pick out a bit in the time available this afternoon, but can I invite you to let this Inquiry have a considered paper as to how an ombudsperson would work in terms of the conduct and disciplinary process as it stands today, as well as, if you wanted to, also including Fairness at Work. Mr Logan: If I can say that Lord Ouseley's report, the second report does touch on that. Sir William Morris: We read it. Mr Logan: So we need to also be aware of – there is a need to reform the regulation, and I think the ombudsperson would have to be operating within that new reform piece, and I truly think that person would actually assist in that process. So you need to give me a bit more clarity on where you would want the specifics of – Sir William Morris: It is your recommendation, we know what the politics is, we know the culture, we know the psychology, we know the whole framework, the environment within which it goes. You know better than I do the existing structure. You are proposing a practical physical change. The onus and the responsibility is on you – your organisation, not you personally – to demonstrate, on a step-by-step basis, how this proposed new practical change would work in practice. I think we should leave it there, because I am inviting you to submit further evidence on that particular recommendation. Mr Logan: I was only seeking clarity, Chairman. Sir William Morris: Fine, okay. Right, can I take you to paragraph 2.10 of your submission? You refer to the ACAS mediation model, and you have indicated that it is a model – or one similar would be of value and assistance. Would you see this as a permanent feature of the conflict resolution process within the MPS? Mr Logan: Well, I will start and I will pass on to Alfred. Especially when it comes to employment tribunals, once an ET1 is registered with the employment tribunals, the ACAS facility is offered, statutorily. Sir William Morris: Sure. Mr Logan: I do not think it has been used effectively; so we are not reinventing the wheel here, all we are saying is let us use that process more effectively, because we have seen a speedy turnover of long-standing employment tribunals, and the majority of them have developed a resolution where all sides of the debate have agreed. Now just by the fact that we have been able to kick-start that process, which has been sitting there lying dormant for a number of years, that we believe the ACAS process is worthy of note, and to be utilised more effectively and consistently, hopefully from the learning points that we have developed with the diversity directorate through Commander Allen working with us closely, and with the Met Police authority. I do not know if you want to add, Alfred? Mr John: I totally endorse that. We need only look at the success rates over the last few months over these long-standing cases to know that it has made a significant difference. We do appreciate the Met's position, in that it would be a defensive one, purely because of the fact that they are not in a position to be impartial. They are the respondents, and they are in the same position as the applicant. Having that independence there not only helps the process but it also adds integrity to the decisions that are finally made, and that is the salient point. Sir William Morris: Okay, let us take this practically. Mr Logan is absolutely correct, it is part of the statutory process that once you lodge the ET1, ACAS is involved, they have a mandatory duty, they see it as part of conciliation. What we want to be clear about is whether you are arguing for ACAS to have a more proactive role at that point, because ACAS comes in before you get into the tribunal, as ACAS, which is a statutory body; or are you arguing for some structure of mediation, and I will use your words, you describe it as mediation, and generally speaking, ACAS arbitrates, but we will not split hairs. What I am saying is ACAS is already there, you can use ACAS as much as you wish, because they are a voluntary organisation in that sense, but are you arguing for a more active role for ACAS, or are you saying that some sort of mediation, a model – the same model but different organisations – we can create one, you can appoint mediators, or a panel of mediators to assist and help, which perform, broadly speaking, the same role. Again, we are looking for some clarity, whether it is ACAS you want or whether you want a mediation model, in which case you can have a model of a one person mediator, or a two or three person mediator, whatever. Mr Logan: In our submission, we do talk about the role of ACAS in the Ali Dizaei case, and how that was extremely important in coming to a resolution around that, and how the methodology that we incorporated, calling in ACAS, to have – what they actually did was bring their skills of mediation into an environment where I do not think we are that skilled, or we have not developed those skills as we should, so they were able to give us some clarity as to the issues on specific cases. In a lot of ways, they did, I suppose, hold the role as the judge and jury, to assist a decision to be made; not to make the final decision, but to say, "Listen, on the merits of this, you should consider going down the ET route or coming to some form of mediation". So all we are saying is embrace the ACAS process within all these cases where they have not been used before, and take the lawyers out of it, and use the stakeholders, whether it is the MPS, the MPA, even the Home Office, to assist especially in those high-profile cases that are creating so much damage for the organisation, in terms of staff confidence and community confidence. So that is all we are saying, is embrace how ACAS can assist – because they have the skills, their personnel have looked at these issues, and can give us value when it comes to decision-making. I think Bevan wants to make a point. Mr Powell: I think alongside that model, at the moment, at the top level of the model is informal review of the particular case, and at the moment, Commander Allen within the Met looks at that, and we believe that the Metropolitan Police needs to put more resources into that, because you cannot just have one person, you know, at a senior level, being able to review what could become hundreds of cases. So a proper structure needs to be built in order to support the underlying ACAS model. Sir William Morris: Yes. Let me just share with you part of our function, our prime function, and I hope you will understand what it is we are trying to do. We are here to get evidence, we need absolute firm, clear evidence; that is the only purpose of the exercise. And from the evidence that we get, we hope to get some recommendations, that is why we are probing to have a very clear understanding of what it is that you are saying. Because I have already said, and you know, that in every single case that is lodged at an employment tribunal, there is a mandatory statutory role for ACAS to try and conciliate – the extent to which they try and conciliate is up to the parties. Now I am not sure in what capacity ACAS entered the arena on the recent settlements. It would be interesting to know in what capacity they entered, whether they entered for mediation, as has been indicated, or whether they entered just informally. That would be a very important point. But if you set ACAS aside for a moment, just for a moment, forget the name, are you saying that you would find interesting or be supportive of a model which would have built in a mediation stage, as early as possible? Mr Logan: Yes, absolutely. Sir William Morris: That is what we want to be very clear about, because ACAS is a name, and the difference between ACAS and other names is that they have a statutory role along with other roles, and if they can do it, fine, but if they are not able to do it, then providing the model has the same objective for mediation, then basically that is what you want us to look at. Mr Logan: I think it is worthy of further review, and we have the outcomes to show the added value that ACAS brings up. Sir William Morris: Fine, well, we would be happy to have another half side of A4 on that as well. I just have one point I just want to put, and then I think what we will do after this is to have a break, for the benefit of the stenographers. I said right at the start of my introduction that we were not just interested in what is wrong with the Met, we wanted to hear what is right with it, but more importantly about what we need to do to make it better. It has also been suggested to us that, as any inquiry, we have an unenviable task, but be that as it may, we have to produce a report, and the report will affect your organisation as well as many other organisations. You are the chair of the Met BPA, and you are aware of all the problems, but we are looking for solutions as well as problems. If we were to invite you to write just one chapter of our report, what would it say? Mr Logan: In the beginning ... Sir William Morris: In the end ... Mr Logan: I will actually start – because I know I am the chair, but I am very fortunate to have a team of very talented people, both police officers and police staff, as part of the team, and the wider membership, let me add, because they have actually put themselves above the parapet to challenge not only at the strategic level but at the local level, wherever they may operate. So I have not got the total vision here, because it is a collective intelligence, a collective wisdom. But if there was an emphasis on a chapter, my chapter would start around: why do we want to have a diverse organisation? Do we truly understand what that is for? Because I hear about targets, and I welcome them, as long as everyone is cognisant of why we want to have a diverse workforce. My chapter would be saying, well – and I will ask my colleagues to comment; we need to change the environment of the organisation so that we actually attract people from all communities, and the Met Police and other police areas across the country will be seen as employers of choice. We need to acknowledge that we all have a role to play, personally and collectively. It is not different hats we wear, it is or should be through our entire being, because if we approach our task collectively, understanding the added value that we all contribute to improve that environment, then I truly believe we will start to acknowledge assistances where they are given, and not seeing them as problems. I know we have respect in the BPA – a lot of people respect us grudgingly, because they know that we assist, they know that we add value, but they still do not really acknowledge what we are here for, and that is to move the organisation on to be embracing the diverse workforce more efficiently and effectively, and so deliver a more effective and efficient service to the community, that diverse community, whether it be London or any other town or city in this country. So that is what my chapter would be talking about. We are talking about hearts and minds, and I know there is a lot of very talented people in this organisation, which we are all proud to be a part of, but there would be so much more if they were talking with their heart as well as their head, because then, by definition, you would be understanding of all these issues we are talking about – I am not saying there would be total utopia, I do not think we will ever get that, in my lifetime anyway, but I would like to think that we start to utilise the legislation, like the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, we start to utilise the Human Rights Act, we start to utilise all these processes and practices in a more efficient way, so that we do not have these re-occurring cases, because the case of Gurpal Virdi is superimposed by the case of Ali Dizaei, and so forth, and then we have the smaller cases which do not have the high profile, and they are people suffering. We are talking about people suggesting suicide, so we are dealing with people's lives here, and I do not think anyone is underestimating it, but they need to be sitting in our seats, and standing in our shoes, to know what is happening, because I heard a submission earlier this week where if someone can bring the evidence to me, I will do something about it; it is not like that, you need to be getting out of your office and finding out exactly what is happening in your organisation, in your teams, and do not underestimate the capacity for people to style things out, that it all is well. You have to get behind all the spin and really find out the substance; that is my chapter. But I have enough work from you, sir, so I will leave it at that. Sir William Morris: Okay. I could comment, but I will not. Anyway, thank you for that. We will adjourn now for about five or so minutes. Could members of the public please remain seated while the witnesses leave the room if they want to, thank you. 3.20 pm (A short break) 3.27 pm Sir William Morris: Right, welcome back. Could I ask Miss Weekes to just pick up from where I left off with her range of questions? Questions by Miss Weekes Miss Weekes: Thank you very much. Mr Logan and your colleagues, good afternoon. I would like to deal with three topics: Fairness at Work will be the first; then I would like to deal with changing attitudes and changing the culture. The third will be gender. But before I start my topics, may I pick up one topic from the chairman, which were his questions in relation to the stance that your organisation has taken in relation to the Federation? On a similar vein, and it is not my intention to discuss the case, but to discuss the decision that your organisation took, and it was the boycott which was a recent decision. We all now know that the boycott was ended the day this Inquiry began, but I would like your comments and assistance, please, on this: it may be thought by some members of the wider public, possibly some members of the police force, black and white, that the boycott sent a very negative message as to what your organisation is about when it takes on the issue of making life better in the police force for visible ethnic minorities, and ensuring that you take with you white managers and white officers. Can you assist? Mr Logan: Well, let me say, first of all, that the decision for the boycott was a collective decision. It was done so reluctantly, but on the basis of a series of cases that had been put to the organisation, Federation and unions alike, and really not getting the action that was required. We were seeing people suffering. We saw, through the Ali Dizaei case, again, how our organisation was being compromised, or attempts to compromise our organisation, over three years. We have been highlighting the issues to all levels of the police service, not just in the Met, but right across the police, through the National Black Police Association, and we were not getting the acknowledgment that we had been highlighting since 1998, when we had the interim executive of the NBPA saying, "There is a backlash to the Lawrence Inquiry, there is a backlash to the recommendations in 1999, and we are seeing an increased caseload without anyone being held to account". We now see a high-profile case involving Superintendent Dizaei, and you think to yourself, well, who is going to be held to account for this? Someone needs to capture all of the processes and practices that led to this situation where millions of pounds have been spent, and we – similar to everything that we do, we looked at a very, very thorough assessment, and the impact of it internally and externally, but in the end, it was a unanimous decision of our executive and our wider membership, in that it was drastic times, requiring drastic measures, to get the attention of the Home Office, the Police Authority, the management board, the various stakeholders who could really look at this issue once and for all. Miss Weekes: Do you think you have got their attention? Mr Logan: Absolutely. Miss Weekes: In what way? Mr Logan: Well, we got the personal intervention of the Home Secretary, he came to the NBPA AGM a week after that boycott was called, and he said personally he was going to intervene in some key issues that we had highlighted, the issue of Operation Helios, the way in which that was carried out, and the outcomes, at the expense of millions of pounds of public money; also, the long-standing employment tribunals that had been stalled by Liversidge. We also wanted to look at issues regarding Hendon, which is supposed to be the centrepiece of excellence in police training terms, not only in this country, but I would suggest the world, because we have people from all over the world that attend courses at Hendon. So here we saw the Home Secretary looking at this, and hopefully I am not misquoting, but he said he is going to make his presence felt, he is going to lean on people. Now it was a wake-up call for everyone, and I know that we had an impact. It was not – you know, it was a negative impact for a lot of people, I understand, but the Secret Policeman programme vindicated a lot of the things we had been saying, that racism was alive and well, not only just as an institution, but also personally, and not so much on a personal level, and people challenge, but people were condoning it, and for me, condoning it is as bad as the perpetrator. No one could say to us, "Well, you have underestimated it"; we said, "Welcome to our world, this has been our world for a number of years", and I truly believe you have certain interventions like that over a number of years, and it all happened at that specific point. So I truly believe, you know, that it needed to be done at that time, and I truly believe we have got this Inquiry as a result of putting the pressure on certain people who needed to make a decision. They may have done it some years down the road, or months, but I truly believe it was a catalyst towards this very point. I know Gareth has a point – Miss Weekes: Just before he does, can I just follow that through by saying this – and I again welcome your comments. You have got the Inquiry, we are going to make recommendations in our report, because that is part of our duties. These recommendations, if they work at all, are totally dependent upon a consistent, continued joint effort. Do we have that from you and your organisation? Mr Logan: Absolutely. I think what is really important is that we all have our day jobs, we all have our primary roles. We live this because we have no choice. If we do not do it, no one else will, and I know a lot of people in the organisation might say, "We do not need you", but I know numerous people have benefitted from the points we have raised over the years, and we have evidenced that. So we would be losing total focus if we did not focus on these recommendations, because in a lot of ways, and I do not mean to be flippant, this is our baby; we have given birth to this, and we are going to take care of that baby, to make sure it grows. Miss Weekes: Your colleague wanted to add something. Mr Reid: I just wanted to add clarity around this issue of the recruitment boycott. I think it is important for the Inquiry to understand that this was not just an issue of Ali Dizaei – his case indeed acted as a catalyst, but what it did was focused our attention and understanding on the issue of retention, maintaining a critical base, a critical mass of black police officers, police staff, within the organisation. The emphasis with our organisation is on recruitment, and we are saying: how can we concentrate on recruitment when we are haemorrhaging, we are haemorrhaging badly? What are the causes of people leaving our organisation prematurely? It was on that basis that we argued, well, there is little point in emphasising recruitment if we cannot keep the people that are already within it, it is in that context. Miss Weekes: Okay, thank you very much. Can I turn to Fairness at Work, please? We are all, on the panel, particularly interested in Fairness at Work, not just because it replaces the old grievance procedure, but because this is the first step on the ladder to early resolution of disputes. It is the most important aspect of the relationship of a police officer and police staff at work; am I correct? Mr Logan: Yes, absolutely. Miss Weekes: So can I ask you: what is the successful aspect of Fairness at Work since it has been introduced? Mr Logan: Well, I will just start by saying that it has built on a lot of learning from the grievance procedure, and I would just like to emphasise that the grievance procedure was a direct result of those Bristol seminars, because the various working groups that emerged from those seminars in 1990 led to the development of that grievance procedure; again, members of the BPA were instrumental in developing that grievance procedure, and maintaining it, such as George Rhoden and Paul Wilson, very important in developing that. So there was a lot of learning that the Fairness at Work has built in. I truly believe that it has taken the learning from that by speeding up the process, because the grievance procedure was painfully slow, and we found that people who were aggrieved in that process were being stigmatised, they were being burdened by the process, it was victim-driven. We now have a process that the advisors can take a lot more ownership of this, and the burden is not down to the victim to be pushing and pushing and pushing. That for us is really important, and we are starting to see again a lot more of the issues the client is mentioning in their grievances being fed back into that borough or that department, so we actually are seeing some quick turnover of the learning. Mr John: If I can just add to that, we have mentioned a lot about the grievance procedure, but the process of Fairness at Work, impartiality is imperative, and the old grievance procedure placed managers and victims in a very difficult position. It could be the same manager who also socialises with this particular person who is also charged with the responsibility of dealing with the grievance; that was a very difficult situation. Fairness at Work has relieved managers of that particular responsibility and assigned it to somebody who is impartial; I feel that the scales of justice are balanced on a pivot of impartiality, and it was imperative. As Leroy has mentioned, timescales have been reduced significantly, so it does not afford people to get entrenched. The problem is viewed, it is assessed with an aim to basically resolve this as quickly as possible. I think also, one of the most salient points, it is also centrally controlled. The first stage of the Fairness at Work policy assigns somebody who is within that borough but not part of the management chain. The second stage cannot even be appointed by the borough and goes back to the Fairness at Work co-ordinator. That has to be a better way of dealing with things, certainly over the grievance procedure. But I must add that these policies are only as good as those that wish or choose to apply it, and even the grievance process, there were some great points in the grievance process, but the timescales were lapsed because no one challenged them. Miss Weekes: Do your membership as a whole think that this is a better way of doing things? Mr John: Most definitely. Miss Weekes: Can I just put to you what we heard very clearly from the Met trade unions from this morning? They are the trade union reps, as you know, for the staff side, and they represent some 12,000 police staff. They say they are most anxious to go back to a central pool of HR individuals dealing with it, to go back effectively to HR, because they do not find the independence of those who deal with Fairness at Work to be sufficient. What do you say about that? Mr John: I do not agree with that. First and foremost, even in the statement, they do not have 12,000 members within the Met, they have less than 6,000, as far as membership is concerned. PCS is over 300,000-strong from other organisations. Miss Weekes: It may be my mistake, I think I am quoting 12,000 as the figure of staff, but I understand that point. Mr John: The truth of the matter is that I do not believe that the right way forward is to take away the imperative of managers to manage. The whole truth is that the Fairness at Work procedure gives us the opportunity and gives the Met the opportunity that managers out there will be able to deal with these matters properly. By dealing with it centrally, central staff do not sit with these staff to deal with disciplinaries. They will get a case – yes, they may remain independent, but getting out there, seeing what the circumstances are like, seeing what the environment is like, and having some control still maintained by local managers so that they become empowered to deal with these situations I feel is a much better system than actually dragging everything back centrally. We have seen on regards to employment tribunals how things can get dragged out, we have seen over the last grievance process how things can get dragged out, and I believe we will go down that road again if we go back to a central system. Bearing in mind the weight, the number, the sheer volume of cases that come through, we will not have the resources to deal with it at a central point. Mr Logan: I was just going to take the point of empowerment, because you have to go through that process to get those skills and abilities to feel confident in dealing with these matters, especially when it comes to complex matters of race, equality, whether it be – and gender issues, because I have heard time and time again around people feeling uncomfortable, "Well, you need to go through that uncomfortable process to get the learning, to get the confidence to apply your skills". So you cannot empower people, you have to give them the opportunities to develop their skills to become empowered to deal with these matters; no pain, no gain, that is basically it. You have to go through that difficulty to get the skills to develop and work, you know, on a practical basis. Miss Weekes: Well, just help me with this, Mr Logan: there are some people in this world who are very good professionally at what they do, but the moment you give them a management role that involves personnel skills, they are hopeless. Now I think you will agree with me, genuinely some people cannot do it; what is your comment? Mr Logan: I do not think anyone is not able to do it. Maybe they have not surrounded themselves with the right sort of people to get the information. It is like this group of people here; I do not have all the skills, but I know a person that does, and I know a person I can go to, and do not believe that you have all the answers. Because we are an organisation that is so task focused, success driven, and it unfortunately reduces the inclination to ask, because some people think that shows weakness or a lack of credibility and experience, and I truly believe once you get over that and start saying, "Well, I do not have all the answers, let me go and ask certain people", whether it is within my team, in my department, or let me ask members of the community; you know, bring in some professionals on this. "How would you deal with this?" Then I can see them again developing. It is not an overnight process, but start asking those questions, I am sure that will help that person to become better than hopeless. Miss Weekes: Do you as an organisation tell us, as absolutely everybody else does, in every conceivable report I have ever written, that more training is needed? Mr Logan: Not at all. Before Alfred jumps in, I do not believe training makes anyone a racist or a sexist, and I do not believe any training will reverse that. It is around people's awareness and understanding and sensitivity to the needs of people. So I do not think we mention anything about a focus on training; what we hopefully will see is a proper assessment being made in those circumstances for that individual or that team, and where the gaps are, you assist, and if that developmental aspect can be assisted by training, then yes, but blanket-bombing training we question very, very heavily, because after Lawrence, one of the recommendations was community race relations training, millions of pounds spent, thousands of people trained, and I have to question: what are the outcomes? No one can answer us, because there was no evaluation done and no follow-up. Miss Weekes: Put yourself in my position. Think again to what our role is and what our task is, to make sensible, robust, practical recommendations. If I am to pick up your wording and put it into a recommendation, it will sound like this: no more training, we have had quite enough, we need awareness. What does awareness mean? How do I put that into practical recommendations? What do you mean by that? Mr Logan: Well, you can go through various processes. I am going to bring in Bevan in a minute, because he has actually been doing that in a specialist operation role, but we need to start to develop tools to assist people, because we can put them in a classroom setting, very sterile, and say, "Right, go and deal with that", but I think there needs to be an ongoing process of evaluation and assessing your performance. That is one of the reasons why we highlighted the diversity excellence model, because the excellence model is something that has been used in the organisation for a number of years, everyone can identify with that. But if you start to have a degradation of the diversity issues, whether it be race, gender and so forth, and you actually have a qualitative assessment, so you are evaluating it all the time, you then start to get an understanding, more of an understanding of what needs to be done within your working environment. It is not a question of just working harder on this, it is just to be a bit more sophisticated in how we develop an analysis of where the gaps are. Miss Weekes: Give me two practical examples of how you want to take forward your recommendation that managers need to become more aware of issues that affect the way they manage, black and white staff. Mr Logan: Before I pass on, I will just say what I do. I have used the 360-degree assessment, so you are getting assessments from not only your supervisors and your peers, but also from the rest of your team that you work with. Miss Weekes: What are the criteria for the assessment? Mr Logan: The criteria are normally based on your leadership skills, decision-making, communication, various planning and organising. Miss Weekes: Have you suggested this to management? Mr Logan: Well, it is actually part of the RUNGE leadership course, which has been running for some years. Miss Weekes: Are they making assessments of managers so that you can see best practice developing? Mr Logan: Well, there is no one that comes back to me and says, "Right, have you done your 360 recently?" Again, good idea, but who is following it up? I know that it creates the right environment for people to come back to me and say, "No, I do not agree with this, there is a way of doing this better". It then gives people that creativity and innovation that needs to be brought into the environment. There is other tools, do you want to highlight on that? Mr Powell: My role within specialist operations, for instance, what we have been able to do is to bring in business tools to help local managers to try and understand some of the diversity issues, not just in terms of people management, but in terms of their policies, their practices, their operational issues. As Leroy mentioned, the diversity excellence model is a framework that allows managers to carry out local assessments of their working practices, the way that they manage individuals, the way they produce their policies and procedures, but alongside that, we also monitor which people are getting training, so that is aggregated, we look at which women officers are getting training, it is broken down by ethnicity, et cetera. We have introduced a psychometric tool which the American military use to understand the probability of issues occurring within the workplace based on difference, so for instance, it is a psychometric tool, and it will look to see how cohesive particular teams are, it will look to see – it will ask questions to see whether or not – if you introduce somebody of colour or of a different faith, what would be the likely outcomes with that particular team? Now this particular tool has been used on 1 million servicemen and women in the United States, so what we are trying to say here is there are business tools that we can bring into the workplace that local managers can use to understand the diversity environment that they are actually working within. Miss Weekes: And have you been allowed to do that, and has it been successful? Mr Powell: Certainly we have been allowed to do that within specialist operations, and we have put that forward to the diversity directorate which Commander Steve Allen heads up, and we are awaiting, really, a decision as to whether or not it will become corporate tools. Miss Weekes: Okay. One of the issues – I wanted to deal with those general points, because I appreciate your organisation is not just about race, you obviously are including all the other wider issues of policing. But if I can deal with an aspect of resolution of disputes that might include a race issue, you very kindly in your submissions sent us some examples, and of course the identity of individuals is not relevant, and they will not be used, but there was an example that struck me as being something that you could perhaps help us with. Just for the benefit of the public, very briefly, this particular case study involved a group of officers in a briefing session being asked to wear a particular item of clothing, and this officer at that particular point in time did not have the item of clothing. I do not know whether it is your view that if I identify the item of clothing it would disclose the officer's name? It would not, thank you. Well, I think it does help to show the public how this was resolved. The order was long-sleeved shirts; an officer wore short-sleeved. But he was able, before going out on operational duties, to wear and obtain a long-sleeved shirt. Whilst on operational duties, he realised that some of his colleagues were not wearing ties; that was another requirement of dress. One or two officers smoked whilst on operational duties. Back at the debrief, he received what you call a 162, which is obviously a complaint about his disobedience of an order, or rather the fact that he did not turn up at the original briefing with the correct length shirt. Because no one else had received any comments about the non-wearing of ties, and because two days later, at another incident, other officers disobeyed a dressing order, he took the view that the service of the 162 upon him by the officer in charge of that group was marred with race discrimination, and he reported it to your association, or rather your association was told about his dilemma. A Fairness at Work advisor was got on board, with one of your representatives, and of course the officer concerned; an initial discussion took place. This would have been the time to have an early resolution of that particular incident. It was not in fact resolved there and then, because everybody in that group agreed, because it contained an issue of race discrimination, it had to go up to the borough commander. Now can I just stop there? First of all, where is the rule or statute that says you cannot informally deal with an issue that contains race? Where is it in the statute? Mr Logan: It does not exist. Miss Weekes: So why did everybody in that group agree that they could not resolve it, and it had to go up to the borough commander? Mr Logan: Before I pass on to Alfred, I think that example is a very important one, because you would be surprised how that happens every day, and a lot of people do not hear about them, but the important thing is that again, you get everyone circling around with entrenched views, and there is a lack of objectivity being brought in to what are the real issues, and how can this be dealt with quickly to prevent further damage for the organisation. Miss Weekes: Just a moment: how would you have resolved that within one hour? It could have been resolved in a hour, could it not? Mr Logan: Oh yes. Miss Weekes: How would you have resolved it? Mr John: I know this case quite well. The moment that a 162 is issued, it is not a Fairness at Work issue, it can only be resolved by the borough commander, and that is why in that particular case it was not appropriate to follow the Fairness at Work. It was actually resolved informally, when in fact the decision was reversed, and the person that tried to actually issue the 162 was more liable for the 162 than anyone else, and he was issued that. That was actually resolved very quickly, in fact it did not go to the borough commander in the end, it went just below him, but I would have been happy, as any other Fairness at Work advisor would have been happy to input and resolve that informally, but from the moment that a 162 is issued, our hands are tied. Miss Weekes: Well, why on earth does it have to be so? Mr John: I quite agree. One would actually argue in that particular case why in fact it actually got to a stage that way, but like I said, we had to deal with it in a particular way. If we did go by the letter of the law, it would be a three or four month investigation; as it turned out, it was resolved by the second meeting, which was not too bad, according to that, but it was a set of circumstances – I quite agree, mediation is much better. Informal chat, I believe, is essential to getting some of these problems resolved, but from the moment that certain processes are engaged, there are certain things that get blocked off. Mr Logan: I think it is down to interpretation as well. Certain people will interpret it in a certain focused way, and they are not open to suggestions. They may have had the suggestion, but the formality kicks in, even though it could have been dealt with in other ways. So they have actually cut off their options. And it comes to a point of all these rules and regulations are there, but it is down to the individual to interpret them. Miss Weekes: Forgive me, who is going to interpret it? Here there was a representative from your organisation who agreed, "Cannot do anything, it is out of our hands", everyone agreed. Now if we are going to make some sensible recommendations, what is it you would want us to do so that what I personally consider is an unfortunate case not to have been resolved within 30 minutes, let alone an hour, what is the recommendation? How can we kick-start much more informal resolution of things that – this may have ended up as an employment tribunal case, might it not? Now what is the practical recommendation? Mr John: As we said all along, it is the intervention, it is the appropriate mediation. In that particular case, the actual person that was served with the 162 never knew anything about it until after it had been served; in other words, he was not spoken to about the entire incident until he saw the 162. That is where it went wrong. Why discussion did not take place – and that is why it was reversed. Why discussion did not take place is actually quite common in the service, that a process is engaged before anyone has a chance to speak about it, and that was a prime example. Miss Weekes: Well, as a representative group of some recognition within the Met, what would you say to your membership, your representatives who were asked to turn up to deal with these issues; what would be your guideline to them about informal resolution? Because no doubt another member of the Black Police Association might say, "I have got another 162, I am not going to resolve it". So what is the way forward? Mr John: I still maintain that in actual fact, we still have to discuss – there is still a huge potential to resolve most cases by and through informal discussion, before those battle lines have been drawn up. But unless an atmosphere for reconciliation has been created, that will be very difficult. Thus I said earlier that for every one person that comes forward, you will have ten others that did not feel comfortable enough to do that. In some of our submissions, we have actually demonstrated the price that people pay to even come forward, and unless that atmosphere for reconciliation is there, then basically it is almost as if the formal procedure is in fact the foremost; it should never be that. That is the culture. Miss Weekes: What do you want to create this atmosphere, the correct circumstances, so people begin to informally resolve things? Mr Logan: I think we need to start looking at some specialist personnel within the diversity directorate, having a practical lead and going on to boroughs to assist in, you know, these areas of concern. It needs boroughs to be understanding that they do not necessarily have all the skills to deal with it, so if they have some concerns on some issues, there are channels in which they can go straight to the diversity directorate and say, "Right, we have an issue", even if it is just telephone consultation or through e-mails, whatever, and get those specialists within the directorate or elsewhere to say, "Listen, we have looked at the merits of this and it needs you to review some of your actions". So we are starting to see that with boroughs, they are calling us on the BPA to say, "Listen, we have an issue and we would like you to look at it", and we are welcome to do that. We have been able to influence a fair number of Fairness at Work issues that would have gone a totally different direction, and we will give our advice, but, you know, if our clients say to us, "Really, I have no alternative but to go down the road of an ET", then our hands are tied, but we will give that advice where it can, but I really think there is a need for the DCC4 directorate to look at this very closely. Mr John: If I may just add to this, the point Leroy makes about specialist staff is very important. Dealing with conflict is, especially when it starts to get complex, a specialist task, but I must emphasise – we have had evidence from other people, I mentioned yesterday, there was Esme Crowther; we have staff like Esme Crowther with an extensive amount of knowledge that, quite frankly, are not utilised enough. They are able to give advice; they cannot enforce. Miss Weekes: She would like a bigger budget, she would like more people, she has told us. Mr John: And I would have to agree, we do have specialists, we do have skilled people, but when the case has become complex, their power is reduced to advice, and they themselves would tell you that the times that they have gone against advice has almost certainly resulted in an ET, and that is not the way to carry on. We should have those key people. We speak in the Met about the right people doing the right jobs. Well, here we have the right people and they are doing the right jobs, but they have no teeth, and in certain circumstances, they need to be in a position to turn round and say, "Well, I appreciate your position on this, but I am afraid you are wrong, this is the way that you will have to do it". That does not take place. And I feel that it is a waste to have such a resource sitting there that can only be used superficially. Miss Weekes: You rate Esme Crowther's department? You would like to see her do more? Mr John: Certainly, I think we have some very skilled people inside there, and I believe that we should be using those people more than we are. Miss Weekes: It is very helpful to know that. Mr Logan: What I would add, however, we do not agree with where it is actually sitting at the moment. We actually believe that department, when it moved from HR to the directorate for professional standards, we were really concerned about how that relocation would change the whole – it was like target hardening, it hardened the whole approach towards employment tribunals. One thing I just want to clarify, obviously the 162 process is for police officers, but, you know, we are still seeing a lot of issues with police staff of this inflexibility. Again, I am not trying to be downcrying police staff, but there is still a culture within a culture in that setting, and police staff will absorb more than most police officers will, and these things are still going on. We really need to be understanding of those differences for sworn and unsworn officers. Sir William Morris: Well, I know you have read these transcripts as they come out, so you will know the evidence that has been given about the debate between officers and staff, and the difference between the terms of contract. Do you want to comment upon that now? Mr Logan: I mean, I am not a specialist like the Federation on a lot of these complexities, but I think there needs to be a harmonising between sworn and unsworn officers for sure, in terms of employment law. I think there needs to be a cultural shift in how we appreciate police staff specialists, because unfortunately, there is still the perception that specialist police staff are not being listened to or acknowledged as fully as they should, because there is that cultural divide to some extent still existing, and sometimes police staff do not even put forward their suggestions, because they do not want the possibility of them being seen as being troublemakers, even though putting forward that suggestion would assist the process, and we have seen that through our case studies, where people are finding, "Well, it is best not to say anything, because I do not want to have a difficult life", and I can understand that. Mr Powell: I was just going to add to the point that Leroy made: one of the special and unique factors about the Black Police Association is that it is made up of all staff, whether police officers and police staff. The points that Leroy has mentioned about putting forward ideas or having their voices heard, the BPA provides that mechanism, so that all staff, black staff, can have their voices heard, can have their creative ideas heard, and can be put forward at a policy board, and can be considered. Miss Weekes: Can I move to the second of my topics, and it falls out of the first, really? It is the culture. Recommendations at the best of times often sit on a shelf and gather dust, and they are simply words, like lots of the policy documents which I know you live with. It is clearly not easy for any public inquiry to make recommendations about how you change people's mindsets, attitudes and culture, and I know this is a topic that we could all debate until 10.00 tonight; I doubt you would have an audience. But if you had to tell me two things – I am going to make you tell me two things that you want us to consider which are high on your priorities, two things that will assist in the change of mindset, attitude, culture. I have in mind – again I am dealing with management of staff; we have been told managers actually do not like to take on board difficulties with staff, because if it goes pear-shaped, and it goes against them, it goes on their record, and when they come up for promotion, it does not look very good. The same thing happens with the race issue, it does not look very good, so that is why they hand it up the road. It may be the same thing when they deal with women, I know not, but it is all to do with fear, as I understand it. So I have on board that quick summary of the evidence I have read, and it is only quick, it is quite a complex topic, but what are your two issues, two aspects of the matter that you want us to keep on board? Mr Logan: I will touch on one, and then I will pass on to Bevan. What I really think, in terms of the culture of the organisation, is making a mistake, a genuine mistake, is not necessarily a sense of failure. It is actually a part of learning. As I said before, the organisation perpetuates itself on success, getting it right first time, with the right people at the right time, great, fabulous, but do not try and hide areas where you get it wrong. That is what we have to try and develop in the organisation; take away that climate of fear that if you get something wrong, you are not going to be chastised or seen to be less able than your peers, and so, you know, you are not going to try and hide it away from that specialist selection form because you do not want it to be seen as doing something short of the mark, or you want to go for promotion. Because that hides so many – you know, that is where the bodies are buried, in people hiding things, unfortunately. Until we develop that climate where even if you make a genuine mistake, and people actually acknowledge that, and the steps you have taken to try and prevent that, it is not seen as a failing; I think that is a genuine step. Now that again is the hearts and minds of people's attitudes towards each other, and I truly believe that is one of the things we could start doing. Miss Weekes: How do you make or how do you convince a majority male management group that they should be less hard, less macho, less male and say, "Well, sorry, I did get that bit wrong, and I take on board your views about improvements for the future"; how on earth does a recommendation get to that? Mr Logan: One of the things that we have submitted in our paper is around affirmative action; start changing the scenery. That changes cultures, because we want to get away from the white male Anglo-Saxon boardroom, and having a more diverse boardroom, and start to see that permeate right throughout the organisation. That is why we truly believe there needs to be a reflection not only of the community at the lower ranks but also throughout the ranks of police officers and police staff, and that is why we truly believe there is a debate to be had around affirmative action as it has been implemented in the police service in Northern Ireland since the Patten Report. We know it is government policy, it could be introduced here, and managed in a way that it is not seen as quotas, because we are not talking about quotas. Do you want to add to that? Mr Powell: My second point was Leroy's point, which is around affirmative action; we need a critical mass of people from various ethnicities reflecting London within the organisation. The reason we say we need that critical mass is the issue around assimilation. We believe that if you trickle feed, as we are currently doing, then the difference that those people would bring into the organisation is, in a sense, suppressed by the majority culture, so we would argue – and we have recommended – Leroy said we do not use the term quotas, but we are asking for a 50/50 recruitment policy, as in Northern Ireland. Miss Weekes: Well, a white manager who reads this transcript might say, "Oh right, I see, the Metropolitan Black Police Association want us just to pack this force with some more black people", and where is the merit? Mr Logan: I think it is the people we are attracting. Unfortunately, we are not getting the people that can really add value to this organisation. I think we have some incredible people, who are willing to – you know, from black and minority groups, really going through some real difficulties, but still sticking in there and trying to move this organisation on, and the organisation is responding to some extent, but we are not getting young people who really could see the police service as an employer of choice. We are not getting those calibre, especially from black and minority groups. We work with young people through our leadership programmes over the last four years, and they are striving for excellence, they are very empowered young people, but they do not see the police service for them, because they hear about how staff are developed and dealt with internally, and, of course, they receive a certain amount of service which affects their perceptions about the organisation. When you start to see some significant changes in the make-up of the organisation, that is a significant impact, especially on people trying to decide, where is their career path. For example, when Colin Powell was head of NATO forces, American recruitment of black African-Americans improved by 30 per cent. So role models are a very significant impact on changing the scenery of – Miss Weekes: Do we have the details of your suggestions on affirmative actions within your submission – the detail, is it in the submission? Mr Logan: In terms of practical implication? No, we have not. Miss Weekes: I would very much like that. I appreciate it is another piece of homework, but rest assured, we will be here for a little longer. Can I, if I may, move on to my last topic, which is the gender agenda? I have noticed, and it is an impressive line-up, but it is four men; where are the women who speak on behalf of your organisation? Well, the hands are up, but they are not at the table, they are in the audience. Why are they not at the table with you? Mr Logan: A very good and important point, and I am not going to make excuses for not having women here at the table. However, I will clarify certain situations in terms of how we came through the process of developing our submission. We had very short notice in having to put some essential issues within a short space of time, and this is the subgroup that drew up the submission. And it is a very daunting task; I must admit, I would like to see the sisters in the organisation being part of that process right from the very beginning. As I said, we have a women's forum that has been running for some time, and they are doing some excellent work. Miss Weekes: Well, did you invite women to present with you this afternoon? Mr Logan: I think it was like everything, we needed to – we as an executive discussed the whole process, and we have women on the executive, and we said, well, who are the people best placed to put forward our ideas? I am not saying it is a perfect process, but it is the process that we as an executive did take forward. Miss Weekes: But you will see the importance as to why I ask the question. Mr Logan: Absolutely, yes. Miss Weekes: When you allow women to sit in positions of high profile, and they sit at an important public inquiry, you are sending a message, which means you too believe in diversity. Mr Reid: It is inexcusable, it is as simple as that. Miss Weekes: Thank you. I am very grateful for that, can I thank you for that frank answer. Can I in any event deal with the wider issues in relation to black women? Now I want to just bring up two pieces of work, and the first is Lord Ouseley, some time ago, in 2000, wrote a report where he considered the issues of diversity in the Met. Page 13 – if we can just find the right reference. Unfortunately, I have given our excellent document finder the wrong reference. I actually have it, I will read it to you: "Sex discrimination is another issue which requires much more investment. There are too few women officers in senior positions, and some very talented women staff have left the organisation during the period of this review, because they believe they have not been sufficiently valued and recognised by their employers. The Metropolitan Police Service cannot afford to lose any talented staff and considerable attention should be given to the gender prejudice and women's under-representation in senior positions." There is one other reference, and it is your own reference, so although I have asked you the question about the non-presentation, not, I have to say, in your main submission did the issue of gender come up, but in the documents that you sent us, at your document page 13/123, there was one reference only to women in the whole of your documents: "Ethnic minority women face triple discrimination on the basis of being police staff, ethnic minorities and female." Now it is quite clear that the majority of women appear in the police staff area of policing; that is correct, because I know you are on top of the statistics. And in any event, when I looked at the last statistics – this is recent, I know they have been updated since February 2004, but in March 2003, within the ranks, there are 1,266 black visible ethnic males to 308 females from ethnic minorities. The most senior black woman in the police force is a superintendent, o