PCO0068
Supplementary written evidence submitted by Rt Hon Alun Michael, South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner (PCO0068)
1. As a former member of the Select Committee it was a pleasure to give evidence recently, albeit remotely, and I am pleased to respond as follows to the committee’s three further inquiries, starting with the issue posed in each case:
2. The committee asked about the diversity of the Professional Standards Department (PSD) in South Wales Police:
3. As I understand it the focus of your question is on the people who deal directly with complaints from the public, and in this team one of the eight individuals is Asian (Pakistani). By way of background it may be helpful to state that recently, in advance of a round of recruitment for the Case Management Unit, consultation was undertaken with staff associations, including the Black Police Association, and it is hoped that this will help to broaden the profile of recruits to the team. PSD in total, that is including administrative roles and other non- public facing roles, has 36 employees, who identify as White [35] and Asian (Pakistani) [1]. They also identify as 44% female and 56% male
4. On Pension Forfeiture, the committee asked about the sanction available within the police discipline system of pension forfeiture and the fact that the Commissioner is responsible for making decisions regarding pension forfeiture [Q79 and Q80 in transcript]:
5. Pension forfeiture is normally requested by or on behalf of the Chief Constable in cases of Gross Misconduct. The individual concerned has a right to be heard, both when the forfeiture is considered in principle and when, following approval of the request by the Home Office, the Commissioner consider the level of forfeiture within the law and regulations.
6. Personally, I think the request process is far too clunky and prevents the application of common sense in the first of the two stages.
7. The Commissioner has to start by considering whether there should be any forfeiture but is precluded at that stage from considering where the forfeiture should be at the maximum or at a lower percentage. I should say that I have chosen to take a lower percentage on at least one occasion, based on a complex balance of judgements in a difficult and unusual case. It would have been much preferable to consider all the facts and arguments in one sitting.
8. The application is then sent to the Home Office and a further hearing has to take place, if permission is given, for the Commissioner to set the level of forfeiture. It would make far more sense to have a single process by which the Commissioner seeks permission to apply for forfeiture and sets the appropriate level, perhaps stating. ‘I am minded to order forfeiture at 40%’, for example.
9. No fresh evidence is available to the Commissioner (or indeed to the Home Office official or to Minister) at the second of the two stages that are currently required and it simply drags out the process which doesn’t seem to make sense.
10.In my experience the arrangement creates unnecessary and unproductive delay.
11.It extends uncertainty which is not fair on the individual and becomes a source of complaint to staff in the Commissioner’s team who can do nothing to change the it. Anything which can make the process more streamlined would be better, fairer and more cost effective.
12.To be frank, I can see little merit at all in the requirement for Home Office approval to be required because it adds nothing to the process, being too remote from the individual circumstances and indeed the voice of the appellant as well as the impact of those circumstances on the people concerned and on the Force.
13.The fairness and legality of the system have been tested in the past via judicial review but this ping pong to the Home Office and back does not test anything. This process is not an appeal, the individual is not heard by whoever reviews the case in the Home Office and it is not clear how any intervention would serve justice as the appellant would not have been heard by the person changing the decision, so I can’t see on what judicial criteria a variation could be based.
14.It is therefore also unfair to those in the Home Office who receive the papers for review.
15.To me the key question is the extent to which the officer or former officer has acted in a way which is inconsistent with the required standards of integrity, has acted in a way that has damaged individuals, has brought policing into disrepute with the public and has betrayed the trust of his or her colleagues. When I make those judgements I make similar judgements as those I used to make when sitting as a magistrate. 16.The forfeiture powers are there to send a clear message to police officers about how seriously trust in policing is regarded by the force. I gather that it has not always been the case but in South Wales since I have been Commissioner the successive chief constables have fully appreciated the importance of using this power to demonstrate the very high importance of integrity in the police service and requests for forfeiture have been made accordingly. PCO0068
17.It was suggested that the IOPC requires increased resources to improve its independent investigation capacity but that additional funding should not be taken from police budgets, as has happened previously. Do you think that the IOPC requires increased resources to fulfil its role? If so, please explain why. Is it your experience that increased resources for policing oversight and regulatory bodies impacts funding for police forces?
18.While the question is about the resources available to the IOPC, this cannot be answered in isolation because the key question is whether the balanced requirements of each element of the system (there are three) can be met and set against realistic expectations. If not, we will perpetuate a system in which seemingly realistic expectations remain unmet, and I want to take a step back to suggest how the requirements of the future need to be framed.
19.Successive Governments have changed the arrangements for dealing with complaints and disciplinary action against police officers and I said in my evidence to the Committee it is important that these changes are not simply seen as a further stage in a one-way journey away from high quality and principled police leadership towards a totally external system. Transparency and accountability are vital, while delay is a massive problem for complainants and their families, for individual police officers and their families and for the Force itself.
20.However leadership is centrally important to the police service. Especially in the best parts of the police service, the nature of that leadership has matured and become about much more than a top down style in recent years with moral standards, relationships, an understanding of behaviour and prevention balanced with protecting vulnerable people, dealing with emergencies and coping with some very nasty and dangerous people in complex situations. That is why, in my evidence, I stressed how important it is for all officers in a Force to know that their Chief Constable maintains and will pursue the highest standards of behaviour and probity by all officers and indeed by staff as well.
21.For those reasons, a very careful judgement indeed has to be made by Government and Parliament about when the responsibility sits in a Professional Standards Department where all concerned know they carry the high expectations of the Chief Constable in their work, supported and scrutinised by the Commissioner, when it is taken out of that line of accountability wholly into the responsibility of the Commissioner and when it is taken completely outside the Service and into the hands of the IOPC.
22.Of course there must be ways of dealing with extreme failure – a corrupt chief constable or an incompetent chief constable – but neither fulfils the job description of chief constable and it is important to expect Chief Officers to match up to and require the very highest standards. Despite that, in any Force, there will be circumstances in which it would stretch credibility to leave the job to the Force that is under criticism or challenge. But there is also a need for a more objective atmosphere in which everyone on all “sides” awaits the outcome of the independent investigation before rushing to judgement. That seems to have been abandoned in the age of social media and it seems to be getting worse.
23.My time as an MP started with the murder of Lynette White in the area where I was a community worker until the area only a year before – one of several major miscarriages that led to the imprisonment of innocent men – and I arrived in the Home Office with Jack Straw to deliver the promise for a thorough-going inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. In my time engaged with elements of policing, it was normal for a chief constable to simply defend his (in those days it was always “his”) officers without waiting for any investigation or inquiry. I have seen that change totally reversed in South Wales at least. The “job description” requires the chief constable to follow the evidence wherever it leads and to act on the evidence without fear and favour. It requires the chief constable to build in the highest possible standards to what he – and the whole leadership team – require in terms of both the actions and the principles upheld by officers.
24.It follows that the act of taking decisions out of the hands of the chief constable is important and will certainly need to be taken in appropriate circumstances, perhaps regularly, but these are not decisions to be taken lightly. I am currently working with the third chief constable who I believe shares the determination to get this right and to insist on the highest possible standards but I don’t believe that the system as a whole is fully thought- through and balanced on the basis of consistent principles.
25.That there should be an Independent body is fundamental and indeed I was one of those who campaigned for such an independent body having see the problems that can arise if systems become too slack and tolerant of abuse. While the vast majority of police officers are highly committed, professional and even idealistic about their role the small number who undertake the most appalling transgressions and abuse of their powers never ceases to amaze me. Many of the appeal documents I saw when I was Deputy Home Secretary were literally shocking and that is true of the small number of cases that I see now in my current role, especially in relation to forfeiture. A chief constable or a commissioner who is not alive to the activities of such people within the police service cannot do an effective job.
26.There are also cases in which either the seriousness of the case or the public concern generated – for example in some serious allegations of a racial or sexual nature or where there are suggestions of collusion or corruption, or if there is believed to be an organisational or institutional failure – mean that the PCO0068
inquiry must be independent. But that becomes counter-productive if the independent body is not resourced and equipped to undertake inquiries much more quickly. The Select Committee asked us whether there should be a twelve-month limit on independent inquiries. There can be genuine reasons for delay – such as delay in a prosecution that has to predate the inquiry, or missing persons – but in general 12 months is an intolerable length of wait in many, many cases and it is important that what Government, Parliament and the Public can expect of each element of the system is crystal clear and matched with the resources to do the job in a timely fashion.
27.I return to the point that Government and Parliament need to will the resources and not just will the legislation. As a Minister wanting to change legislation, I always came up against the requirement to support any draft Bill with the resources to match the legislative will, and I hope the members of the Committee will forgive me for saying that it’s a principle we hear little about nowadays. The problem with professional standards is that they can’t be tackled properly without adequate resources in each of three locations (in PSD, in the Commissioner’s team and in the Independent body) with each playing a full and balanced part.
28.Those resources need to be provided by the Treasury or the job cannot be done properly. It certainly is not good enough to top-slice a requirement for the IOPC off the police budget because that removes police officers, staff or resources by reducing the money that comes to individual forces through the Police Grant. We are pleased to be in a 3-year period when police officer numbers are being restored to nearly the level lost over the past 10 years but the cash to support that number of officers has not been restored in the Police Grant and the significant shift from the Exchequer to the Council Tax Precept payers is causing increasing annoyance and resentment. In respect of the recent reforms I can only speak of the IOPC office in Cardiff where there is evidence of a greater sense of urgency. My own approach, like Sue Mountstevens in Avon and Somerset, is to try to get the right balance of complaints work done by my own team and that for which I hold the PSD to account. The message from myself and the chief constable needs to be consistent and set the highest standards. We also need the IOPC and Government to point consistently in the same direction.
29.Returning to the most recent set of changes, the additional resource required appears to have been significantly underestimated in the planning stage and that is likely to continue being a challenge whichever of the options a Commissioner chooses. During COVID-19, complaints have increased as have the number of reviews, leaving staff stretched in coping efficiently with demand. If Commissioners are lucky they have one or two people handling these matters, and as a proportion that is still not equivalent to the Professional Standards resources in each force (South Wales has a team of 36). 30.Returning to my central theme, the changes have blurred the boundaries in terms of who is doing what and who is meant to be doing what, and that should be addressed. We have seen the IOPC make recommendations to the Chief Constable, leading to an operational decision for the Chief Constable to take and for the Commissioner to hold the Chief Constable to account. However the IOPC may also expect to play a role in “holding to account”. I am clear about my primary role as the Commissioner but there can be different expectations from the IOPC, the NPCC and guidance from both the College of Policing and HMIC as well as policy documents from Government. We endeavour to work some of the issues through via the APCC but I don’t think the law is 100% clear on primacy. If there is going to be a continued increase in reviews and if issues in respect of policing come ever more under scrutiny, and potentially subject to expense and delay through judicial review, clarity of law and expectation is in the interests of everyone including Government and Parliament.
31.I am certain that the developing role of the Police & Crime Commissioner since 2012 has played a constructive, significant and positive role in supporting chief constables and also in challenging them constructively and holding them to account. They have considerable variation in background, beliefs and experience but my observation is that Commissioners bring time commitment and engagement to bear in a way that simply did not happen before. A chief constable needs to be a strong leader and in the complex world of 2021 our experience suggests that he or she needs a strong interlocutor, capable of strong but constructive challenge. Nowhere, I suggest, is that more necessary in the difficult and challenging work of getting the balance right in the field of principles, standards, conduct, discipline and complaints and nowhere is it more important to get the balance right. Why? Because it is about public confidence, accountability to the public but also about the core standards of the police service in our communities and the leadership, confidence and maturity of our police officers and staff without which our police service is nothing.
32.The Select Committee is right to be devoting time to this issue.
March 2021