Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“My right hon. Friend is being very generous to Her Majesty’s official Opposition in saying that they do not believe that treaty change is obtainable. I think he is misinterpreting their motives. I think they like the European Union the way it is and the way it is going. Funnily enough, that is creating high unemployment and global financial instability, but they have no intention of changing it because they do not want to change it.”
“For example, despite all the attention given to improving the police response to women reporting rape and to other sexual offences, they were still being under-recorded, according to him, by between 22% and 25%. Moreover, his persistent efforts to raise his concerns with his command chain had been met with indifference and then resistance. When he started to blog and write publicly about his concerns, it turned to outright hostility as the command chain resorted to disciplinary measures in an attempt to silence him.”
“The Committee’s programme of work aims to ensure that all statisticians and others who work with data and evidence across the public sector have the tools to do so effectively. We made it clear that we remain prepared when necessary to take up issues that might arise concerning statistics and their use in Government. The process leading to the inquiry on crime statistics started when a Metropolitan police constable—James Patrick, a constituent of mine who worked in the statistics section of the Metropolitan police—walked into my advice surgery. He told me that he had been trying to raise concerns that the crime figures recorded by the Metropolitan police were being manipulated.”
“A full description of that series is set out on our website, along with the reports that we have published so far. We must ensure that the UK Statistics Authority is doing all that it can to deliver the very best statistics for Government, the public and public services. That helps deliver better policy, improved scrutiny and media reporting and ultimately better democracy. Measurement is a key way of holding Government to account. We can be proud of UK statistics, which are renowned throughout the world and trusted. I pay tribute to the Government Statistical Service and to all statisticians in Government and the public services, on whose professionalism and impartiality we all depend.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the report of the Select Committee on Public Administration, “Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics”. The Public Administration Committee’s remit includes oversight of the work of the UK Statistics Authority and the Government Statistical Service. We attach the highest importance to that responsibility. We took a decisive role in decisions leading to the appointment of the present chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot. The Committee announced a programme of work for this Parliament that involves a series of studies to examine statistics and their use in Government, their accuracy and relevance, and their availability, accessibility and intelligibility to the public.”
“What our inquiry had already exposed demonstrated that the numbers produced by polices forces were simply not good enough to rely on. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority had all been far too passive in addressing the problem, even though they had all known about it for years.”
“Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told us that the accuracy of data on rape and sexual offences was “a lot better than it was, if we took it back five to 10 years.” However, he did not think that it was entirely reliable and agreed that there was cause for concern. The UK Statistics Authority has overall responsibility for the assessment of the quality of Government statistics. It designates a reliable series of statistics as national statistics only if they are good enough. As a result of the Public Administration Committee’s inquiry, shortly before the chair of the UK Statistics Authority appeared before us to give evidence on police recorded crime, it stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark of national statistics.”
“Does he or she record attempted burglary, or downgrade it to criminal damage in order to achieve the target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms, because most police forces are still in denial about the damage targets cause, both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour. We found an amazing disparity of attitude towards targets across police and crime commissioners and among chief constables. Our official police witnesses, most notably the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, were somewhat defensive and seemed unready to acknowledge that their statistics were inherently flawed.”
“In January 2014, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, on behalf of the Rape Monitoring Group, released a compendium of statistics on recorded rapes in each force over the previous five years. I invite right hon. and hon. Friends and colleagues to look at the table showing how wide the variation is among different forces across England and Wales in their no-criming of rape. According to the figures, in Lincolnshire, for example, 26% of all reported rapes were no crimed in 2012-13; by contrast, in Merseyside, only 4% were. The national average was 11.9%. The main reason for misrecording was the continued prevalence of numerical targets, which create perverse incentives to misrecord crime. A police officer is presented with a conflict.”
“The poor data integrity that we found reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police. Whether the police comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity, will determine whether the proper quality of police recorded crime data can be restored. I emphasise that there is much evidence that action is now being taken on that. We found strong evidence that the police have under-recorded crime, particularly sexual crime such as rape, in many police areas. There remain wide disparities in no-crime rates—that is, where police decide that a crime did not take place—following reports of rape, for example.”
“We also heard from academics Professor Stephen Shute and Professor Mike Hough of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, who told us: “Lack of leadership results in decay in the recording systems.” They said that there was “no doubt that there has been dishonest manipulation at one end, through wilful blindness, to misunderstanding and ignorance, to the inappropriate exercise of discretion within a complicated set of rules.” The Committee found that police recorded crime statistics were unreliable and inaccurate. Lax supervision of recorded crime data meant that police were failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. This is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our national police force.”
“Indeed, Mr Patrick believes that it contributed to the Metropolitan police’s failure to contain the London riots three years ago, because the new shift systems established by the Metropolitan police were based on a false understanding of crime patterns across London drawn from police recorded crime statistics. This adds up to a lack of trust, and raises questions about police leadership that must seriously affect police effectiveness. We also took evidence from police and crime commissioners, such as our own from Essex, Nick Alston, who warned, in my view wisely, that however much police may think they have taken action to address the problems, ingrained attitudes and behaviour can have a long tail and take a long time to change.”
“All those techniques are designed to make constabularies look as though they are doing a better job than they actually are, as became evident after a sharper fall in crime was recorded by the police than in the crime survey for England and Wales. It was a statistical indicator that had already raised eyebrows in the UK Statistics Authority. Such things are done to improve individual officers’ job performance appraisals, promotion prospects and, ultimately, salaries. We also heard about the terrible effect of such practices on the effectiveness of the police. It fails the victims of crime, because the crimes that they have attempted to report are not attended to. It results in the misallocation of police resources, because under-recorded crimes become neglected.”
“We heard about the various techniques that have crept into the culture of policing to help police meet crime reduction targets, leading to the corruption of police recorded crime statistics, so that they are less meaningful than they should be. Those techniques include cuffing, in which multiple incidents are recorded as a single crime, and crimes such as burglary being recorded as less serious offences, such as theft or criminal damage. James Patrick also told us about nodding—offenders admitting to a number of offences in exchange for being charged with a less serious crime and getting a lighter sentence. There is also skewing, which is when more resources are put into the specific areas measured by performance indicators at the expense of other work.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth emphasising that under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, PC Patrick should have been afforded some protection. I will come to the position of whistleblowers later in my remarks. Our report, which was published this April, draws on evidence that we took under full parliamentary privilege from James Patrick. However, that was by no means the only evidence on which our conclusions relied. Our witnesses included Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detective Forum; Dr Rodger Patrick—no relation—a former chief inspector at West Midlands police; and Peter Barron, a former detective chief superintendent at the Metropolitan police. They all fully corroborated Mr Patrick’s analysis.”
“It simply means that the raw data, on the basis of which so many decisions about the allocation of police manpower and resources are made, are of questionable accuracy. That cannot be a good thing. It also means that we found that there is a culture and attitude and ingrained behaviours that are in conflict with how we expect our police to behave and how the vast majority do aspire to behave. That is what we must address. A leadership model based on targets is a major cause of the problem and is flawed. I have been told anecdotally that there is a generation of “target junkies” in our police forces who have been brought up on and believe in targets and will find it difficult to move away from them. However, that is the cultural and attitudinal change that police leaders must bring about.”
“Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I could not persuade it to fund the legal expenses and representation of PC Patrick in the employment tribunal that he was due to appear before as part of his defence. I find that completely and utterly inexplicable, particularly after the Police Federation itself told us in evidence to our Committee how difficult things are for police whistleblowers in this country.”
“He was in effect hounded out of his job, following a long period of harassment by the Metropolitan police command chain, which, I dare say, used and abused the disciplinary process to get rid of him. It does the police no credit that a whistleblower should be treated in such a way. He was, for example, accused of a conflict of interest for publishing a book about the misuse of police recorded crime statistics, even though the proceeds were paid to a police charity. In an LBC radio programme in December last year, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said that he would meet PC Patrick. He never did so. Most shameful of all, the Police Federation saw fit to finance a libel action at the choice of a serving police officer against a former Cabinet Minister, my right hon.”
“Nevertheless, I look forward to what the Minister will add in today’s debate. Our inquiry, the evidence presented to the Select Committee and the reaction of the UK Statistics Authority, which withdrew its approval of the police recorded crime stats, vindicate Mr Patrick and his actions utterly and completely. As I quoted earlier, even the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees that “there is clearly something that PC Patrick raises that we need to get to the bottom of.” Despite that, I can only describe the treatment of my constituent James Patrick as shameful. By doing his duty and raising the issues, he showed the highest commitment to the core policing values, but as a result he became the victim of the most monstrous injustice.”
“We are indebted to him for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service, despite intense pressures to the contrary. Paul Ford of the Police Federation told us that his organisation “was dealing with a lot of stifled whistleblowers…We have lots of anecdotal information but, unfortunately, people are fearful of coming forward and raising concerns. That comes down to the whistleblowing aspect of the lack of protection for people, the peer pressure and the fear factor in terms of their future”. I am pleased the Minister for Crime Prevention has told me that the Home Office is looking at a range of radical proposals to strengthen protection for whistleblowers in the police, but that has all come too late for my constituent.”
“I am encouraged by the engagement of the new College of Policing and of many chief police officers around the country, but the CSPL’s unique and independent perspective has more to offer. Turning to whistleblowing, one of the most depressing and saddening parts of our inquiry was discovering how the Metropolitan police treated James Patrick, my constituent. I was not able to address that as fully as I will now, because an employment tribunal was pending. He withdrew from the process. He could not take any more; it had taken too heavy a toll on him and his family and he was forced to resign from the Metropolitan police. Acting as a whistleblower, PC Patrick tried to highlight serious concerns about police-recorded crime and the target culture.”
“I am somewhat mystified about why it is not prepared to confront that question directly and openly, even if Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is already looking at it. After all, CSPL stands for Committee for Standards in Public Life and its remit is ethics and standards. If it avoids the issue of ethics and standards in the police, it will achieve nothing except to mess with a highly charged political debate about whether police and crime commissioners should continue to exist, which does not seem to be so relevant to the remit of the CSPL. Our recommendation reflects our understanding of the need to challenge police operational leadership about how they promote and sustain the values set out in the new ethics code.”
“I have to say that that is not quite the inquiry which Parliament, through my Committee’s report, has asked it to conduct. We recommended that the CSPL should conduct “a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new Code of Ethics; in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining these values in the face of all the other pressures on the force.” Accountability structures will not of themselves promote the right values in police leadership and in policing. Accountability depends upon effective leadership, which in turn depends upon leadership that is trusting and is trusted by its subordinates, and that in turn depends upon high levels of trust and integrity within the organisation. If the CSPL is to conduct its inquiry effectively, it cannot avoid the issue of ethics and integrity.”
“I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers, chief constables and, indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has had a distinguished career in public service and whose senior officers and force daily put themselves at risk in the line of duty. Yet those same officers have overseen a deeply cynical culture about the quality of leadership, honesty and integrity by presiding over such a thing. That is why we recommended that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics, in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values. I note that the CSPL will now investigate the public accountability structures of the police.”
“That is a cultural change to which I hope this report is contributing. Otherwise, we are encouraging what amounts to institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime. What does that say about the police’s ability to comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity? That is why PC James Patrick felt that it was his duty to speak out against what he found to be going on in his force. Our report of course came on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership. I will not list them all again now, but the whole question of leadership and values needs to be addressed.”
“Our inquiry found that, for example, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, has continued to set targets. It is tempting in our political culture to set high-level and public targets, but I wonder whether the public believe the numbers anyway. It is the first law of science: as soon as one tries to measure something it changes its properties. That is what is happening in this case. Poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police, which the Home Secretary and the Minister here today have understood. That is why the Government have abolished national policing targets. It is for police forces and police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London in his equivalent role, to embrace and understand that and to believe it.”
“The progress that has been made in moving away from a slavish reliance on strict performance targets and a lazy culture of chasing the figures is an important part of that. The Essex constabulary is setting an example that other forces should follow.”
“In the HMIC inspection of the Essex police, my local constabulary, for example, the inspectorate found that crime is largely recorded accurately and ethically. Of the incidents in Essex examined by HMIC, fewer than 7% were incorrectly recorded as “no crimes”, which is still 7% too many, but compares well with a national average of 20% across the constabularies in England and Wales that were inspected for the interim report. The HMIC interim report provides independent validation of the robust processes that exist in the Essex police to ensure that crimes are correctly recorded. Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh has shown clear and strong leadership on the importance of accurate crime recording, developing and building on the work of his predecessor, Jim Barker-McCardle.”
“Evidence shows that forces that carry out internal audits produce figures of much higher quality. HMIC is conducting a 43-force inspection of police crime-recording policies and practices. An interim report was released in May 2014, with a final report to be published in the autumn. In addition, we are told that in 2014-15 HMIC will begin a new annual programme of all-force inspections of core policing work, to include crime recording. The work on that programme is in the planning stages. There is a commitment that HMIC will make specific recommendations for each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales to improve the accuracy and consistency of their recorded crime data. I very much welcome that.”
“The Home Office is working on that with the Office for National Statistics, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and others. That was confirmed by the chairman of the UKSA in his response to our report last month. HMIC is in the process of an all-force inspection on forces’ approach to crime recording and no-criming. Sexual offences is one of the six main crime types that the inspectorate is reviewing, and a specific sample of rape cases is being collected to assess police recording of rape. That is the only way in which to check the quality of police-recorded crime figures—to follow individual cases through, interviewing the person who originally reported the crime to see if the record is corroborated by what people thought that they had reported. It is called audit, and there needs to be more of it.”
“I hear what the hon. Gentleman, who is also a member of the Select Committee and took part in our inquiry, says. After what the Home Secretary said about the Police Federation, however, I do not think that it can be regarded as part of the Home Office. I am afraid that the Police Federation is more a branch of some of the worst aspects of police culture. It needs a dose of ethics and integrity as much as some parts of the police do. I will not make a speech about the federation now, but the incident we are discussing is yet another one that utterly vindicates what the Home Secretary told the Police Federation about six months ago in her courageous and outspoken speech. The Government, in their response to our report, state that they aim to secure redesignation of police-recorded crime as a national statistic by the spring of next year.”
“I am pleased that the Government’s response to our report has recommended that various agencies take action, but that will never absolve Ministers if we find further problems. Our system works by making Ministers accountable, and if there is not a measurable improvement, the PASC will hold Ministers to account.”
“One reason why all the problems with crime statistics have developed is that no one appears ready to accept responsibility for the quality of police recorded crime statistics. Although the Government accept and welcome our report and its conclusions, they do not yet seem to be willing to address the fundamental questions of leadership nor to accept responsibility and be accountable. I accept that the Government are addressing the leadership question through the College of Policing, but in the end it is Ministers who must take ultimate responsibility. In reality, the very fact that the Minister is sitting here shows that he is doing so; I only wish the Government would admit it.”
“The Government have accepted some of our recommendations, but they have rejected our recommendation that the Home Office “takes active primary operational responsibility and accepts accountability for ensuring the integrity of the data which it collates, validates and submits to the ONS for publication.” The Government argue: “It is for chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force area, and for PCCs to hold them to account.” The Government also reject our recommendation that the UKSA should hold the Home Office to account, and instead argue that “it is the responsibility of chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force, and for PCCs to hold chief constables to account.” Nor are the Government taking up our recommendation that HMIC should set a minimum suitable rank for force crime registrars—something that we believe is necessary to ensure that they have sufficient authority within their force and direct access to their chief constables.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the importance of audit is that it provides the data with which to challenge what is going on. Otherwise, the only option is to accept the figures given. Scrutiny from the police and crime commissioner in Essex has been instrumental in encouraging the positive progress in the county. Nick Alston has supported Chief Constable Kavanagh and the independent inspection by HMIC, which means that the people of Essex can have a high level of confidence in the figures for police-recorded crime in Essex. The process, however, is ongoing. We must embed a culture in all our police forces based not on chasing figures but on the core tasks of policing: protecting people from harm, bringing criminals to justice and keeping our communities safe.”
“To make a plea of mitigation in defence of the police, there are occasions when an offence is reported—perhaps even one as serious as rape—that involves two minors and it might actually be the right decision not to involve the criminal law. There must be an element of discretion, as it might be in the interests of neither party to involve the law in a particular case. The point that we are making is that that discretion has been used so widely in some constabularies that it cannot possibly be justified.”
“We were briefed yesterday by the chief constable of Essex, and many of my colleagues were astonished to learn that whereas most people think of crime as burglary, auto theft or violence against the person, there are four times as many incidents of domestic violence as burglaries every day in the county of Essex. The scale of the domestic violence problem is something that all constabularies will have to spend much more time on in order to protect the public, who are becoming victims of these crimes.”
“We all share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the pressure on resources. However, the chief of the Metropolitan police has reported that he has been able to take all the savings out of the back room, and there are just as many officers on the front line as there were before the spending reductions. In Essex, we are finding that technology can enable police officers to do much more. Technology can release resources for the extra tasks that we are demanding of the police, despite the overall reduction in resources. Furthermore, there are still huge savings to be made in the way in which police forces buy technology and communications equipment. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I do not think that we need to despair about it.”
“I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, but I must insist on accuracy on one point. There may be a bit of wishful thinking in his Department. HMIC was not specifically tasked with that responsibility until after our inquiry started. There has been some retrospective interpretation of what HMIC was asked to do, as HMIC was tasked to do that only after our report got going. I understand why everyone is a bit defensive about what our inquiry started to uncover, and the Government want to be seen to be ahead of the game, but I honestly believe that he is inadvertently misleading the House by suggesting that all that had started before our inquiry began.”
“My right hon. Friend the Minister is making a good fist of responding to the debate, but are there not better targets that PCCs should pursue? For example, by surveying the public whom they serve, they could ask them how safe they feel from crime and how much confidence they have in their local police forces. Are those not better targets? Indeed, they tackle the question of perception, which is so often what crime is really about—people feeling fear of crime and often irrationally so, because they live in a very safe place.”
“The anonymous hotline sounds good in principle, but it does not provide the protection that whistleblowers need; they need immunity from disciplinary proceedings while the complaint is being investigated. Even if it is shown to be illegitimate and wrongly founded, they still need protection, providing they made it in good faith.”
“The Minister talks about access to the IPCC, and I am glad he has clarified that. PC Patrick clearly understood he had to go through his line management to have his complaint referred, and he was not allowed to do that, so that was either a mistake or there has been a change, and if the Minister could clarify what that is, I would be grateful. It has to be understood that going to this anonymised hotline really does not provide any protection at all. What is the IPCC meant to do to pursue the complaint? It will go back to the force and say it has had a complaint about such and such. Of course, those on the force will instantly know who has complained, unless they are completely stupid, which they are not—they are detectives, after all.”
“There has been a substantial reduction in the sample size of the crime survey, and it does not capture a lot of crime where there is a growth trend, such as cybercrime. We need to consider the crime survey, and I reserve the right of my Committee to conduct a proper inquiry in future into the crime survey for England and Wales.”
“It is already having quite an impact, alongside the impact of others, whom I commend, who are having to put this matter right. I welcome the support of the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for this report. He was, if I caught him correctly—if I may intrude on an internal debate in the Labour party—questioning the wisdom of the Labour party’s decision to abolish police and crime commissioners in what appears to be a precipitate way.”
“I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to conclude this debate under your chairmanship. I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on the comprehensive nature of his response, which I will come to in a moment. It underlines the advantage of a Westminster Hall debate: the devoted few can turn up and discuss at length, and cross-examine the Minister at length on, the issues raised in a report. I speak as one who was a little bit cynical about the Westminster Hall idea when it was first mooted. I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who contributed to this debate, and I particularly thank Committee members, present and not present, who have supported this work. I think that they will agree that this has been one of the most exciting, influential and important reports that we have produced in this Parliament.”
“I spoke to a rather more traditional senior police officer, who is now in the House of Lords, who told me that his philosophy of police leadership was that provided the officer could explain that what they did on the night was the right thing to do on the basis of the information they had at the time, he would always back them. It is that kind of supportive leadership that most chief constables understand and aspire to, but it obviously has not existed for police recorded crime. It does not exist all the time in all police forces in the way that it should, which is why we have such an opportunity. Whistleblowers are an important part of leadership by involvement, listening, understanding and supporting. The shutting down of people who try to tell the truth is one of the indicators that an organisation is not functioning optimally.”
“It is about empowering people who have to tell the truth. At their best, that is how the armed forces have always worked. There is a belief sometimes that in the uniformed services, it always has to be about command and control, instilling discipline and people doing as they are told. Relationships in the armed forces at their best are not transactional in that way; they are about sharing intent, understanding objectives, supporting each other through tasks and then reviewing and learning from the mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.”
“That happens in every organisation. To change habits and behaviour is the hardest and most painful thing to do in any change programme in any organisation, but it has to be done. We have the opportunity to do it on the back of this inquiry. I am not sure that the Minister has yet grasped the scale of the problem and the scale of the opportunity to improve policing. I leave it at that. I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating the points he made in his letter to me on whistleblowers. He emphasised the need to consider immunity from disciplinary proceedings for whistleblowers. That is incredibly important. What we are doing in the health service, with the post-Mid-Staffs inquiry and all that, is exactly parallel to what we need to do in the police, and to what is happening in our fire service in Essex.”
“The vast majority of police officers will feel, “At last, we are talking about the real stuff and we will get stuff done better than we have ever done it before, because we will tell each other the truth.” It is the lack of truth behind these statistics and the way that they have been falsified—in some cases very badly—that indicate that all has not been well in the culture and ethics of the police, and that is why I lay so much emphasis on the recommendation that the Committee on Standards in Public Life holds an inquiry. Public confidence demands it. We have had Hillsborough, Savile and the Lawrence affair. So many things have left a big question mark and a deep scar on the public’s confidence in policing. It is not that the police are bad people; they are good people who might have got into some bad habits.”
“It is releasing people to have conversations about how they regard and treat each other in a way that has not happened before. That needs to happen in every constabulary. There will be some people who feel threatened by those conversations and think that they undermine their historical position, their authority or how they have done business, and they will fight it. They are the ones who need to go.”