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 It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information.

This resource is from the Transcripts section. This section contains a transcript of the public session with Mr John Azah, Mr Ben Owusu and Ms Beverley Thompson of the Independent Advisory Group to the MPS, on 7 April 2004.

Sections available here:

• Transcript of public session: Mr John Azah, Mr Ben Owusu and Ms Beverley Thompson OBE of the Independent Advisory Group
  • Questions by Sir William Morris
  • Questions by Sir Anthony Burden
  • Questions by Miss Weekes

This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering.

Transcript of public session: Mr John Azah, Mr Ben Owusu and Ms Beverley Thompson OBE of the Independent Advisory Group

Wednesday, 7 April 2004
2 pm

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone, and Mr Azah, welcome to you and your colleagues. Can I first of all say thank you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry this afternoon to give evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission, on which we will be asking some questions, but right at the outset, let me say that we found it extremely helpful.

I do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, a process of this nature may be somewhat daunting, so in that respect, I thought it might 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, but as you will see, there are two other members of the panel. On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary, after a very long and distinguished career in the police service.

On my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC; Anesta is a very eminent barrister and sits as a recorder and part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

As you know, we have been tasked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up that organisation.

The inquiry that we are conducting is inquisitorial and not adversarial in nature or indeed character. We are extremely keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference, so that we can make the appropriate recommendations for further good practice within the Metropolitan Police Service.

To help us in our task, we are keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but what is right with it; but more importantly, we are looking for practical ideas, practical solutions as to how the Metropolitan Police Service can be made better.

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

At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, first Sir Anthony Burden and then Miss Weekes, and I will take the opportunity to put any supplementary questions to you if I find it necessary.

At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity to make a brief closing comment, should you wish to do so.

But in the context of the information before us, you have very helpfully provided us with a written submission on behalf of the independent advisory group, and a copy of that submission will also be posted on our website once you have given your evidence.

In your submission, you have set out information which indicates very clearly the areas of priorities and responses to our correspondence. You have led us to a greater understanding of the history of the MPS' independent advisory group. You have set your information in context, and you have highlighted the IAG's achievements, structure, framework and strategic involvement. Of course, you have given us a commentary by way of the conclusions of your submission.

Naturally, we want to explore these areas with you, and we also want to ask questions on a range of other matters which are relevant to our terms of reference and are of interest. But before we commence the questioning, I wonder whether, for the benefit of the transcript notes, you would mind formally introducing yourself and indeed your colleagues to the Inquiry.

Mr Azah: Thank you, Sir William, and thank you for inviting us to give evidence to the panel. My name is John Azah, I am the present chair of the Met Police independent advisory group. On my left is Beverley Thompson, who up until last year was the first chair of the independent advisory group, and is now presently honorary vice president; and on my right is Ben Owusu, who is one of our three vice chairs.

Sir William Morris: Okay, thank you very much indeed for the introduction of yourself and indeed your colleagues.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Mr Azah, I notice from your submission that the IAG has its roots going back a very long time, 1998 in fact, when Ricky Reel subgroup was formed and that you have been observing the activities of the Metropolitan Police Service in one way or another since then.

Would you agree that the credibility of a group such as yours stands very much on its independence?

Mr Azah: Yes, I would totally agree with that. I think the context in which the independent advisory group was set up – and in fact we were instrumental in bringing in the word "independent", because we were initially set up and called lay advisors to the Met Police. We took the view that certainly from the walks of life that we were invited to come from, we would say that we are a collective of independent – and the word is bandied around, maybe inappropriately sometimes; we are a bunch of independent experts from various walks of life, from industry, from the private sector, from the public sector and the voluntary sector, and we wanted to stress the independent perspective which we were bringing to the table.

And therefore we changed the name – and also being called lay advisors sometimes presupposes that perhaps there is a lack of expertise and experience, and therefore we changed the name from lay advice to independent advisors, and therefore have clung very dearly to the word "independent", because we wanted to stress that what we contribute to the process is that independent perspective from communities rather than anything else.

Mr Owusu: Can I add something to that, if I may? Also the selection process, when John Grieve started, was most of the Met's sternest critics, ie my organisation I belong to would not even sit around the table to talk with the Met before I became a member of the independent advisory group.

So it is not a selection of people who are already in bed with the Met; some of their sternest critics were selected at the initial stage.

Sir William Morris: Yes, but of course the Met is a big family, it has a number of stakeholders, and some of the stakeholders bring a political dimension to the table; for example, the MPA, the Mayor, the Home Secretary, the boroughs, and I could go on.

Would you say that the independent advisory group is truly independent, not just from the Met but from all these political stakeholders?

Mr Azah: Well, I mean, I think sometimes – I mean, you need to look at our membership to sometimes decide on whether we are a collective of independent people who are quite stern with our criticism of the Met Police, or whether, as others have indicated, we are, after doing it for some time, in bed with the police service.

I have a list of the membership that we have presently and historically, where some of our members are in the audience, and, you know, we have people like Beverley who have got a history in the work that she has done on race equality; we have a former member who is David Muir, who resigned from the group because he became an MPA member. We used to have people like Peter Herbert, who is an eminent black solicitor, and has been chair of the BPA for years.

Some of our members – Jim Elliott, who is in the audience, up until recently was a PCA member. We have members, we have councillors from the boroughs who were selected either because of their role as councillors or because of their history that they have as advocates or critics of the police service. So we take the view that we are very independent of all the organisations.

I might add perhaps that not rigorously but in recent history, the MPA has sought to have us under the umbrella, and we have tended to resist that, because we wanted to be able to comment on strategic issues which affect the police service, and that our independence was crucial to our survival, and that is how we remained.

Sir William Morris: Let me say to you that I clearly had not expressed my question sufficiently clearly. It is common ground that the membership of the advisory group are independent individuals, and no one would want to impugn motives, character or the way they work; that is not about the individual members, when we talk about independence in this context. It is about the methodology of how the group works.

For example, it is a very relevant question, and I will put it: to whom is the group accountable?

Ms Thompson: If I can just assist there, just going back to your earlier question, I think our understanding and the working definition that we have taken around independence is that we are not a statutory body, we have no decision-making function; nor are we elected by individuals within the community to represent them.

So we are independent of the process, but have a view from that external process, having been informed about the workings of the organisation, so from our point of view, that is how we have used that as a working definition of independence for ourselves.

And for us, our independence and who we are accountable to, I guess is to us, as a group, and to the communities that we all come back from – so although we are not elected by communities, individuals within our respective communities will say, "What on earth is going on in the Met? How have you allowed this to happen? Is this not awful?" Or, "This is very good". So in a sense, our independence is very much to our group membership.

Sir William Morris: Do you report back to the community? You know, I am very keen to understand the principle of accountability; to whom are you accountable?

Ms Thompson: We will report through our various personal networks. So, for instance, those of us who are involved on police consultative groups might provide some information back to that group, but there is not a formal mechanism for us to do that, because the Metropolitan Police Service has already those links to statutorily report to the community – to police consultative groups.

So our remit is not to be a further source in terms of information on behalf of the police, if I can put it in those terms, back to communities.

Mr Azah: Sorry, can I add to that? I think also we need to continue to remember that the reason we were invited to become advisors to the Met was bedded in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report; part of the recommendations – and a number of them, recommendation 2, 28, 30, 50 and a number of others were clearly indicating that the police needed to recover its role within communities by building community confidence.

And I have spoken extensively to Chief Superintendent Jeff Braithwaite, who was one of the people who in fact helped DAC John Grieve to set up independent advice, and I persistently asked him how some of us came to be selected, elected and whatever process they used. And it goes back to what Beverley is saying: within communities, I work and have worked for 15 years as director of an REC, and therefore they saw us as maybe people who were bedded in communities anyway, and therefore we had a stake within what happens in communities.

And very briefly on the issue of accountability, we have made it our business, perhaps, in terms of giving advice, not to be accountable to the police service or to the MPA, because of the nature of the independent work that we do.

Therefore, we are not decision-makers; we give advice, very good advice, I might add, and the responsibility then rests on senior police officers to either ignore or take that advice, and that has aided our independence.

Sir William Morris: Yes, but is it true to say that you are speaking for yourselves?

Mr Azah: Yes, indeed. Part of the criteria for what we do is that we are not representatives of any communities. I as a black person, African, born in Ghana in West Africa, have a perspective into the black community, but I am not elected. The people that I work with come from very diverse communities, and therefore I sound out people who have a perspective and an opinion, but I offer my opinion based on my own life experiences, and perhaps some of the experience that I have gained from doing work as a race equality officer.

Sir William Morris: Commander Allen, who heads the diversity directorate, has told us, in his written submission, that your group has been involved in over 370 cases since its inception. That obviously gives your group a unique insight into the whole concept of complaints handling, and I wonder whether that, in addition to your involvement in, say, the gold group, might put you at an edge where your independence might be compromised from time to time.

Ms Thompson: If I understand your question, Sir Bill, are you trying to elicit whether or not the number, the sheer scale of incidents may have compromised the independence?

Sir William Morris: No, it is not a numerical issue, it is an involvement issue.

Ms Thompson: Right, okay. I think one of the things about the organisation is that the organisation is a very numerical organisation, so any one of us may have given advice about an aspect of an inquiry, and the organisation will count that, whether or not you have been actively involved. So the range of involvement may be greater in some cases than in others.

I think in terms of our own independence, I think one of the things that we have always been very careful and anxious about is our ability to remain critical, because in order to develop the relationship with the organisation, there has been a process where we have needed to trust both the organisation to provide us with the information that we will need, in order to give the advice upon, and for the organisation to feel comfortable to trust us to give us some very highly sensitive and confidential information.

Now in doing that, one develops a relationship, and there have been occasions where we have had to be very clear that because we have a good, constructive working relationship, that we have not – that does not prevent us therefore from being critical of the organisation. So there are always some very key things for us. You know, why are you doing this? What have you done? How have you done it? Are there examples across the organisation which you could say were comparable to whatever decision you are proposing to make?

So I think from that point of view, we have been able, just using some very basic principles, to continue to ask those "how, what, why, when" questions, alongside, obviously, our group members, on our monthly meetings, where we may be talking about some of the concerns we have, who will also be raising other issues.

Sir William Morris: Okay. The National Black Police Association, in their written submission to us – and we have a reference, if it is helpful, NXBPA 1/86 – they have criticised the way in which the group works, providing, as they put it, and I quote, a "get out of jail" free card to some senior officers. What do you understand by that, and do you think such a chart has any validity?

Mr Azah: It is difficult to answer this question, but I am going to try and be constructive. I think a lot of people who accuse the independent advisory group of a number of things, I might add perhaps have never been to an IAG meeting before, they perhaps do not understand the workings of the IAG. And we have sought to invite people either as observers or participants to our meetings to observe what we do, and I have already alluded to the fact that perhaps the MPA has sought to have the IAG under the umbrella; we have resisted that, based on our view that we needed to remain independent.

What we have also – I think we have successfully done, is done what Beverley has described, offered strategic advice based on our life experiences, and perhaps our history and some of our own experiences from doing work that we do, and sometimes – I mean, I think my members and I find it quite difficult that our detractors feel that unless we are controlled in a certain way by certain organisations or people, then perhaps we are not doing a good job.

And it is fair to say, perhaps, that part of the reasons why some of us were invited was perhaps our involvement in Stephen Lawrence per se; some of the gold groups that some of us have been involved in I might say were very challenging. In fact, Beverley and I were one of the first three members of the IAG who were recruited in November 1998 to sit on the reinvestigation of Ricky Reel, and in those days, you did not have independent oversight, you did not have intervention from people, from communities, and there is a whole number of things, including us asking the police service to make the PCA report, which was done on Ricky Reel, available under controlled circumstances to the family, because they were asking some pointed questions.

That has never been done before, and so on and so forth, up to the present stage where I can categorically say, even though I am not able to disclose the evidence, that we have gone from giving advice to being involved in very secret, covert operations, where I am advised that there was an advisor or there was certainly independent advice and oversight over the repatriation of the people who came from Guantanamo Bay. So I think our contribution to the added value of the advisory process is very robust and sound, and I usually have problems when people criticise the process without actually having been involved or having observed the process.

Ms Thompson: Could I just add something –

Sir William Morris: Can I just say this? Because it is not about the quality of the work you do, or the contribution you make, because I think everyone recognises the importance of that, but the reality is, for better or for worse, we do live and operate on the basis of a representative democracy, and from that position, you are performing a significant act of public service.

In this instance, we have the responsibility to enquire into an institution to which you are giving strategic advice and are privileged to the quality of information that you have just shared with us.

It is not an unreasonable question from the community's point of view to ask again: to whom are you accountable? But more importantly, do you not think that if you were accountable to, say, the MPA or the IPCC, as it is today, your contribution would even be better enhanced in its quality, and, of course, it would carry greater integrity on the basis that you are accountable to somebody, because you are accountable – you are appointed by the Metropolitan Police Service, as I understand it, please correct me if I am wrong; you give advice to them, but it is on behalf of or in respect to the community – as you say, from time to time, you are able to share with the community basically from your own community, and that is defined by yourself.

So you can see the issues of accountability as being important from the point of view of where the Inquiry stands, because we have to have a look to see how the professional standards directorate, for example, is dealing with cases, who has an input, who has not, whether the input enhances the quality of the decision or it does not. So it is not a personal issue and it is not a qualitative issue, but it is an issue on which we will be required to have a view, because it is in evidence to us from the Met itself, and from others.

Ms Thompson: If I can just assist, the independent advisory group is not expected to replace statutory consultation processes. Now the Met advises and takes advice from a number of individuals and statutory consultative processes. If anything, the advisory process is to assist the organisation in building up that advisory capacity.

Now the very reason we resisted coming under the umbrella of the MPA was that right at the very outset, we have also had our own concerns about how the MPA might have been operating, bearing in mind that we had been around before the MPA were created, and the very reasons that you have mapped out was very much for us, that we are not elected by anybody, and so therefore we need to ensure that the organisation extends its consultation process.

The point in the NBPA submission around the get out of jail card I think refers back to the point I made about the organisation being a very numerical organisation. So, you know, they will constantly refer to, "We have taken advice from independent advisors"; that may not necessarily be this group, because just about every borough in London now has an independent advisory group. They also take advice from lots of other individuals.

I think issues around payment – the advisory group has always had a register of interests, and the advisory group makes no decisions about anything, be they commercial or anything else, so I think that is unfortunately some kind of miscommunication.

And I think as far as being tightly controlled and the sharing of information, there are a number of individuals on the advisory group who actually assisted in the establishment of the very first Black Police Association, so I think the process by which the national association has obviously grown has actually not been necessarily informed by some of the kind of historical work and perspectives.

Mr Azah: Sorry, my colleague wanted to add something there.

Mr Owusu: You mentioned accountability; some of our accountability is demonstrated in some of the critical incidents, where we worked in partnership with the police to reach a successful outcome, and you also mentioned about selling out (?) some of the officers in terms of what the NBPA are saying.

If I am sitting on the gold group, I am more concerned about the facts of the case I know, not the individuals involved; so in terms of who is the victim or who is the perpetrator, I am more focused on what is there, the material there for me to advise on what process should be taken in dealing with these issues. So I am very disappointed that those comments are made.

Sir William Morris: Right, okay.

Mr Azah: Sir William, just to wrap that up, the BPA is a member of the advisory group. The BPA are the only set of police officers who have voting rights on the advisory group; again, to underwrite our independence, we took a decision right at the beginning that police officers were not going to be voting members of the group, because we did not want to compromise the independence that we brought to the table, because sometimes there were more police officers in meetings and membership than independent advisors.

And again, I mean, I have to say that I am surprised about some of the criticism, because the BPA are full members of the independent advisory group, and they have shared all the information that has been available to us. As Beverley said, we have got a register of interests, and I am not sure whether other organisations who do similar work have. And they have never, certainly in meetings, expressed those concerns about whether we ought to be paid or not.

I have been doing this for five years, I have never claimed a penny, even though I am entitled to it, and therefore, this has never been about money. This has been about shared access to information, the lessons that we are continuing to learn from Stephen Lawrence and his murder, and this is about ensuring that we regroup and recover the confidence which black and minority communities lost when Stephen Lawrence was murdered. That has been our founding rules, and we continue to remind the organisation that this is about Stephen Lawrence and this is where we want to go.

Sir William Morris: Just a final point from me before I bring in Sir Anthony: from the very important vantage point from which you sit as an advisory group, and the privileged information that you are offered from time to time, and have access to, on a scale of one to ten how would you rate the Metropolitan Police Service in respect to the handling of complaints?

Mr Azah: Tough question!

Ms Thompson: I think on the experience that we have had, in the ones that we have been involved with, I would say that the organisation has not really reached a halfway point actually. I think that the organisation suffers from in-depth knowledge at the top of the organisation, which does not get translated through to the more junior ranks about when – at the very outset of a complaint, you know, how it is dealt with at the very, very early stages.

The point at which some "intelligence", if I can put it that way, actually begins to be applied to a complaint is when it has gone pear-shaped; when actually it has been in the system for months. So I would probably say it has probably got to about four.

Sir William Morris: Just one supplementary to that: at what point does the advisory group make an intervention, by invitation or whatever, but at what point do you get involved?

Ms Thompson: The practice has been when it has gone completely pear-shaped, just outside the door of an employment tribunal. That is where we have been called in.

Sir William Morris: Okay.

Mr Azah: I think, to give you an example, we are on record as saying that at our second meeting of the independent advisory group, we requested that – and demanded that the Met look critically at what it called long-standing grievances and complaints, and that these cases ought to be settled in one way or another.

Our view is perhaps taken up on to Secret Policeman for Steve Allen, Commander Allen to be advised to try and mediate and settle some of these cases.

And so our experience is that the Met Police is continuing to learn, but the learning has been very slow, and yes, I mean, there are key moments where we are invited to participate, but in the initial stages, when things were beginning to be derailed, and then obviously would be an advantage.

Mr Owusu: The subgroup I chair also had meetings with DPS where BPA was a member, and we agree on terms of reference, which we can share a copy with you, basically dealing with long-standing grievances and how to stop cases dragging on for long, at the initial stage. There are a lot of issues that come up in this, ie confidence of managers to deal with the issue, irrespective of who is making the complaint, and the support mechanism in place for victims, perpetrators, because it is all people involved here.

And also, how the issues, once they are addressed – the learning process from that, so that it can be fed back into the whole process, and also the bureaucratic way in terms of how to handle some of these cases, because it is built on the old-style Victorian basically hearings, so all these count to make the whole process very, very difficult, but initial intervention is crucial.

Actually at one of our last meetings we agreed, including the BPA, on a process of how to address some of these issues once it becomes known, before it gets out of hand.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much. I will bring in Sir Anthony Burden, because he has some questions to put to your good selves.

Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you, chairman. Good afternoon, and thank you very much indeed for your submission. Can I deal with the recommendation that you made post the Virdi report, please, about the need for mediation and the restorative justice type approach? It was not picked up at the time, but like all brilliant ideas, they all come around again eventually, sometimes rebranded by other people, but it is on the table again now as a very strong suggestion.

Could you please tell us a bit more about the model that you would suggest, knowing a tremendous amount about the culture of the organisation, as you do?

Ms Thompson: I think the stage at which we had made that recommendation, and one which we still hold very firmly to, is that our experience, as I have just outlined, is when things have gone very badly wrong, and when we were first established, we had so many police officers who were wanting the intervention of the advisory group in that process, and what it largely amounted to was individuals wanted some acknowledgment, number one, that something had happened; number two, that it would not happen again, and that there would be some kind of apology, and things would be different, put in its very simplest form.

And what we envisaged was there would be some process, perhaps on borough, that as soon as a grievance was logged, or it was likely to happen, the borough would have access to some kind of independent source of individuals, not necessarily the advisory group, but something external that they could bring in another individual, just to have another view about what was going on.

Because all the way through the Virdi Inquiry, right up until day one of the Virdi Inquiry, the independent advisors were negotiating with the senior police in the organisation to say, "We think you need to review this", and even on day one, where we saw the process that had been established, there was such a sense of uncomfortableness around this – and even at that stage, we were saying, "We think you need to review this. You have gone down a road based on old thinking".

So we would really want to see some opportunity for both sides to be able to call in somebody else just to take another look at it, and particularly where it involves race or gender or any of the other diversity issues, somebody who had some knowledge, some expertise.

Because what was really interesting at the Virdi Inquiry was that the organisation had an independent legal advisor, but at no stage was there any advisor around race, and yet the whole – the very tenet of that particular case hung on the issue of race, but the organisation was having lots of advice about, you know, the legal side of things, but nothing about how things were being perceived, why things were done the way they were.

So for us, it would have to be at that stage, right at the very outset, and it would be an opportunity for the two sides to come together in the usual kind of mediation/restorative justice approach, to talk about what has happened, without going into the kind of legalistic side of things, because actually, there are no winners.

Sir Anthony Burden: So you would place a great emphasis on the external. We have heard from ACAS, very helpfully, about alternative models, and it does raise the question about resources to actually deal with this.

Knowing what you know about the culture within the organisation, if an organisation such as ACAS were to train internal mediators, as a first stop, would that stand any chance of success?

Ms Thompson: My view on that would be the external mediators would have to be of such a stature to be completely exempt from the culture within the organisation, because I think one of – why we have particularly gone for external is that there is no sort of covert pressure to be seen to agree with what the senior officer is saying has happened, and that individual can be completely independent of the organisation, and not necessarily be fully knowledgeable about the good old days, and how things were always done; it actually means you can ask some of the very simple questions.

So I think an opportunity to have some external things, I think would have much more confidence for the aggrieved individual. And I think that is what we have got to look at, it is about the aggrieved individual, and what they perceive as happening to them. And nowhere in my experience has any internal process ever really had the confidence of the individuals, because their experience of it has always been that it works against them for whatever reason. But certainly ACAS would have to be the individuals who could provide the necessary training.

The resource implications again would be something that obviously the statutory groups like the MPA would need to think about, but certainly on a pilot basis – and at the stage at which the Virdi report was produced, one of the things that we had suggested to the organisation was, "Why do we not pilot this, on a particular borough, and get some resources in order to do that?" Unfortunately, it did not happen. The organisation decided to commission another piece of research to review complaints in the organisation.

Sir Anthony Burden: Could we just work through a very simple case study for a moment? A gay officer feels he or she is being victimised on borough by supervisors because of their sexual orientation. What you are saying, I think, is trying to use internal mediators, Metropolitan Police staff, police staff or police officers, would always have that suspicion around it.

ACAS are saying that, you know, this is a resource issue, bringing in ACAS every time as ACAS, "We just do not think we could cope with that", but what you are suggesting is something sort of halfway between.

Where would you draw the expertise from an external source to deal with those sorts of situations?

Ms Thompson: I think that is where – when we talk about trying to encourage the Met to look beyond the usual kind of consultative processes, that actually, some very local people who are working in communities – and this is why I am suggesting on boroughs, actually, because borough commanders ought to have access to a whole raft of individuals, be they on advisory groups or not, you know, local businesses, local RECs, schools; I mean, all kinds of individuals who may just be able to – and would be willing to come in just to offer some advice right at the outset.

So I think the resource implication need not be that great, because we are not talking about employing people full-time, but perhaps just in terms of the training, and obviously travelling expenses.

Sir Anthony Burden: So ACAS still train, but as opposed to training internal staff, you would say select these people from the community who have skills, who show an aptitude, and then train them to come in, and their independence will actually bring a richness to the whole process –

Ms Thompson: I think that would be the preference, in the same way as you have the lay visitor schemes at police stations, so using that very simple model in that way.

Sir Anthony Burden: Do you think from a borough command viewpoint that such a model would be welcomed?

Ms Thompson: I have not heard anything to say it would not be welcomed, and certainly the borough commanders we have been in contact with again have often thought, "If only we could turn the clock back", but, of course, once you have the legal side on both sides, you know, in motion, it is very difficult to stop it. So I have not heard – certainly not heard any resistance to that idea.

Sir Anthony Burden: No.

Mr Azah: Sir Anthony, I think the process we have just described is not dissimilar to a certain type of independent advice actually, where if you go to Kingston, where Mr Braithwaite is taking the advisory group process one step further, where he has got independent advisory networks, where he also has networks within communities, and dips into those communities when he perceives issues coming up which are going to impact on community confidence on those issues – as Beverley is saying, and if I may do a little plug for racial equality councils, our core business is case work.

And I do not think there would be too much difficulty if the police service looked at those organisations and others within their local geographical areas and came to some conclusions about whether representatives from RECs, representatives from other solicitors, organisations within the geographical area would review and look at cases and offer mediation or resolutions in the initial stages, rather than wait to go to litigation, and then the two sides become polarised, and therefore you cannot resolve anything.

So I am sure that there are organisations out there who could aid the process with training and other things, because REC's core business is case work.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you. What we are being told at the moment – and I will not go into cultural issues, because I know my colleague Miss Weekes wants to deal with that in a few minutes, but what we are being told at the moment is that if race is on the agenda, or if any form of diversity is on the agenda, people are like rabbits in the headlights, they freeze, and opposed to trying to resolve it locally, it is straight upstairs, DPS or whatever.

Ms Thompson: Absolutely.

Sir Anthony Burden: Is that something you can associate with?

Ms Thompson: That has been the culture all along.

Sir Anthony Burden: One final point: you also mentioned that you feel that grievances should be subject to regular independent review. Is that another process you feel ought to be in place, other than this external mediation model, this is a review process?

Ms Thompson: Absolutely, a review process.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can you tell us a bit more about –

Ms Thompson: Again, I think that review process in terms of its independence – I think we are talking about it being independent of the organisation, so it may well be that a different police area takes a separate look at that, because I think there are obviously some kind of professional aspects of a particular case that need to be reviewed, and our experience along with Virdi was that although there had been claims that the Virdi case had been reviewed, actually it had been reviewed from the last review. It had never gone back to the very origins.

Sir Anthony Burden: Right, I think I am with you. When you say "review", you mean a thorough case review, the same as the police service would use in relation to unsolved murders, that sort of thing, looking at all the evidence from stage one and saying, "Is this justified, is it proportionate?"

Ms Thompson: That is exactly what we have in mind, Sir Anthony.

Mr Owusu: I think there is also around some of the cases – if you talk of some of the low key ones, they may have influence on, say, underperformance. I mean, I do not think the Met have a process on how to filter that in some of their cases, so revealing not only one but a lot of cases whereby underperformance might play a role, so in learning lessons, they can build in the process of dealing with staff who are underperforming.

Sir Anthony Burden: And, of course, the learning lessons issue is an important one from the organisational viewpoint. Thank you.

Sir William Morris: Thank you. I will pass you straight over to Miss Weekes for her series of questions.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Thank you. Can I please go back to an extremely important topic that we have been grappling with as a panel, and it is: what recommendation do we put in place when we come to write our report to deal with the burning issue of line management.

It is quite clear that well before you get to the door of an ET, when you, your organisation, might be called out, it is too late. I do not say that to criticise your organisation, I just say that because really it is almost too late.

If the Metropolitan Police could improve line management – even though there is what one may call a minority of cases that go to the employment tribunal, they are of such a serious nature that they cause fairly permanent damage to the reputation of the police service.

Just before I bring you to your experience of what you would tell us you recommend for the improvement of line management, this morning, to a Deputy Assistant Commissioner, we put the characteristics that should be required for a good line manager. You will not be surprised that it includes intellectual ability to understand the issue, integrity, an ability to leave behind your own baggage, an ability to be able to resolve the issue with solutions in mind that are practical, but just generally.

How would you suggest the Met improves line management? A major obstacle is that line management is automatic and of right because you become a sergeant or because you become a detective. I have some views in mind, but I would rather hear from you first.

Mr Azah: I will lead, and my colleagues will come in. You are absolutely right, I mean, I take the view that the way the police service is constructed means that you take an exam – not as basic as that, but you take an exam from a PC after a number of years and you become a sergeant, and so on and so forth.

I come from the school of thought that people have got their limitations as managers, when you reach your own optimum level, and therefore it is not automatic that because you get promoted, you become a good manager, and therefore you need to look at the structures where it gives people responsibility as managers in dealing with particular cases.

The case in point, if you take racist incidents or race discrimination cases, the culture of the organisation had tended to be – because there is almost an involuntary paralysis when those cases are reported; because they have not got the capacity for dealing with those issues, people pass it upwards.

Because my view is those are no criteria for promotion per se; you do something on diversity, but not on your managerial ability. It presupposes that if you become an inspector or a sergeant, you ought to become a good manager.

Miss Weekes: Yes, but what is the solution to improve what we have identified as a potential block to reform, because every sergeant is entitled to get ten people to manage, and then when you get an inspector it doubles to 20. That is the status quo. So what is the solution?

Ms Thompson: I would want to suggest something not dissimilar to what is being suggested around mediation. I do think there is a need for first line supervisors to understand the complaints process from the other person's point of view, because I think there is an inherent sense with supervisors that they do not have confidence in the organisation supporting them if it goes wrong.

They see it, therefore, as an HR issue, "So we will send it over to HR, they will do it", and they will send it to legal branch, and legal branch will do it, and something magic apparently happens, and it either gets sorted or, you know, a few months later they are told they have to go to an employment tribunal, so I think the very need for individuals to have some detailed knowledge, which I think only an organisation perhaps like ACAS can provide, about: how do you sit individuals down and take a very objective view about what one is hearing? I think that is the beginning of the process.

I think at the moment, you know, the first line supervisors' training is much more about the kind of – the tactical skills, it is not so much about the human – people management issues. You know, in most fields of commerce, individuals will go off on a proper management training course. There just is no management training course for first line police officers, supervisors.

So it does seem to me that the very culture under which those first line supervisors are expected to work is not actually one around people management.

Miss Weekes: Well, can I just pick you up on training? Because every document I read is about training, every document. We have had quite a different view about training, but in this respect, ACAS indeed say if they had to put something at the top, as a top priority of an organisation, they would put management skills and people skills way before any other skill, and they say that there is empirical evidence out there that that is right, the success of a company spirals from the people skills.

Now the Met does have special reasons to put operational skills way up. If we had to persuade the Met that they ought to shift that a little, and put the management/personnel skills equal to operational skills, how do we do that? I mean, when you had to get something done as an independent advisory group, who did you go to and what did you do, when you had to get it done within about 30 minutes?

Mr Owusu: I think managerial issues – managing staff is part of a managerial function, so if a manager has got all the training and the confidence to deal with a case, it should be part of the appraisal, in my case, because one ET is bad enough, it cannot be for maybe an organisational problem, it should be a managerial problem, because you cannot divorce yourself as a manager from dealing with staff issues and say, "Now I am concentrating on operational issues". So I would see something like an appraisal, it is happening in public places, local authorities, the same thing: the HR is there to support you in terms of any legality or any procedures or interpretation, but you cannot say, "I am a manager, I am really concentrating on operational issues, not staff issues", because it is part of the managerial function. So I would see it as part of the appraisal issues in those terms.

Ms Thompson: I think, just going back to your specific question about who did we go to, actually, we turned to ourselves, and we drew on our own experiences and the experiences from other colleagues, from their organisations.

So within the organisation, we have never been able to draw on any kind of human resource expertise, and in fact any time we have come in contact with that, we have always had a challenge to the approach that they have taken to human resource management.

Human resource management is seen very much as something that happens to civil staff, it does not happen to police officers, because that is soft stuff.

Miss Weekes: We have heard the word "soft".

Ms Thompson: So that is a soft thing that happens to civil staff. Police officers get on with the routine operational issues. So I think the need to begin to change that culture – and we are aware that there are some approaches being trialled in the organisation around leadership, but again, if the organisation sees leadership as just yet another title to put in somebody's – you know, to put against somebody's name, but does not actually understand the very essence of what that means within the organisation, it does not actually change anything.

Miss Weekes: Well, what is a practical example of how the message can be got across that people skills equals success in operations, success in your reputation?

Ms Thompson: I think that is where it has got to come down to whether or not, in terms of promotions, that competency is actually tested, and it is not just something that is written about in terms of, I think, how individuals have historically been promoted.

Miss Weekes: So you would approve, would you, and would you think it workable if the recommendation was that no one is promoted to sergeant or up the scale beyond sergeant unless they have demonstrated management and personnel skills?

Ms Thompson: Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: "Unless"?

Ms Thompson: I do not see there is any other way. I think as long as the organisation can therefore provide for those individuals some real opportunity to develop those skills – because I think that is the bit that is often missing, that there are lots of criteria set against the competency, but actually individuals are never actually given that opportunity to build that experience, and where they are allowed to build that experience, often the opportunities for those experiences are not shared equally.

Mr Azah: Sorry, just to add to that, I am sitting with other colleagues on some of the groups which are looking at promotion and aspects of independent advice contribution to some of those boards, and Ben and I again recently visited a number of role plays in Gravesend, where they were looking at officers who were looking to transfer to particular areas of the service, so independent advice would comment on the expertise, in terms of diversity and issues which the encounters with communities would add value to the promotion of those members of staff.

But I think it is in its infancy, and the service, because it is concentrated on operational issues, rather than people skills, has not been able to separate those two roles. And part of our contribution is to advise on how we feel our expertise could aid them in selection processes, and therefore, we feel the future would aid us on recommendations going forward that independent advice becomes a component part of selection processes in terms of promotion and other issues.

Miss Weekes: I just want to ask what the response was of the Met, if and when you did present your views on management and personnel skills. What was the result?

Mr Owusu: Well, it was very encouraging actually, because it is just another avenue of listening to advice on how to improve, because the issue John raised, we went to this interview selection –

Miss Weekes: What was the response from the Met when it was raised?

Mr Owusu: Very, very positive.

Miss Weekes: They said yes, they would do it? How long ago was this?

Mr Owusu: Just recently, actually.

Miss Weekes: It is just that we have heard that the problems of line management remain pretty bad, in some cases, not all.

Mr Azah: I think we have been aware over our history that in terms of promotion and line management and people management, there were always issues for sergeants and above to deal with, in terms of – because of the separation between operational and people management.

We did not have the opportunity to deal with any of those, even though we contributed to some of those issues in some of the reports that we have made, but much more recently – and I think it stems from, again, Secret Policeman, where there was a more positive invitation, certainly by certain sectors – SO19, I think, took the lead, in inviting us to look at their process, in terms of role plays and interviews themselves, and to contribute to those processes, and so that is where our intervention has been, and we have submitted a report in fact to the DCI, who invited us to sit on those panels.

So it has been terribly recent, but I am aware that there were difficulties going back to Virdi and others, where our intervention has tended not to make a lot of impact.

Miss Weekes: I want to deal with what happens to bad managers, because sometimes, however good you train, however good you instruct, some people are not good at managing; and because at the moment promotion is linked to management, I just want to have your views on what happens to ineffective managers or just plain bad managers.

The view we have from the staff associations is that they are promoted or they are moved, occasionally demoted, but they basically remain in a post which may perpetuate the bad behaviour.

In your experience, were you ever able to recommend a sacking, not that you have a right to sack an officer, or if you were not, what, in your experience, happened to bad managers?

Ms Thompson: I mean, if I start, our experience of ineffectual and bad management practice has not really been dissimilar to the views you have heard from the staff associations, I have to say.

I think for us, we have been surprised by how long the bad management has been allowed to go on for, there just has not been any process of a sergeant actually being effectively supervised by an inspector, and it is just all the way along the line, there just has been no connection with the line management structure, so the very idea you call it a line management structure again is questionable, because one wonders, how is it possible for this lack of management to have taken place?

We have never been in a position to say, "Well actually, we think an individual officer should be sacked", because I think we would have to be very careful, you know, how much we knew about an individual, but we have certainly made very strong representations even about individuals who have joined the diversity directorate who actually we did not think had diversity at the heart of why they were there, or were contributing very much to the work of the diversity directorate, or, you know, quite frankly, were being obstructive.

So I think in terms of our concerns around management, if I can put it in that way, we have been very clear when we have not been happy with what has been happening, and then it must be for the organisation to do what it needs to do.

Miss Weekes: Yes.

Mr Owusu: Particularly if you get into a case where someone complains and, instead of dealing with the complaint, the person is moved to one unit, the trouble is that those who are causing the complaint remain, and the person moves on, moves on with the distaste, "I complained (inaudible) I moved to another area", and also that gives credence for a similar complaint being made in the future. So we are really not happy in terms of moving managers because they are not performing, but rather deal with the issues that are brought to their notice, instead of moving people on.

Miss Weekes: Just because of the time factor, I want to move to my last point, which is about the culture in the Met. But to begin from a particular perspective, the least represented group of officers are black women, and that is still the case today. I have looked at the recent statistics which came out in February.

In your experience again, what is it that you think – because I have asked this of many people, and we are not sure we have got to the bottom of it as yet. Why is it that black women are so badly represented in the officer rank and so overrepresented in the staff ranks?

Ms Thompson: I mean, obviously people's decision to join the organisation is one thing, but certainly in the experience of those black female officers who I have worked with, I think this very macho culture within the organisation, which is replicated by both black groups and the general organisation, actually finds that black women officers will continue to be confined to some of the more – if I can say "softer roles", yet again, so they will be dealing with family liaison issues, and doing it incredibly well, dealing with family liaison issues, not seen to be offered up the opportunities to develop new experiences, which goes back to my earlier point, about, you know, how evenly shared out are these opportunities to develop new skills, and you just do not see any real role models at the top of the tree.

Miss Weekes: Some people might say, and perhaps this is very hard, but I put it on the table: well, if you really want a job, you are just going to have to push for it. Is that fair?

Ms Thompson: I do not think that is necessarily fair, because I think black officers per se have to push for things, but I think when you have even female black officers who are really not represented terribly well by their own support group, because that very structure is just a recreation of the white structures that have alienated black officers in the first place.

Miss Weekes: I think you are talking about the Black Police Association.

Ms Thompson: Absolutely, the Black Police Association just replicates the fact that – you know, the very organisations that the Black Police Association felt excluded from.

Miss Weekes: So it did not surprise you that the panel of presenters did not have a woman on it?

Ms Thompson: I was not aware of that, but it would not surprise me, because I think it is only very recently that they have had executive members on the panel. So it does seem to me that if you do not see any real role models at the top of the organisation, then actually, I mean, the opportunities to be considered to act up, to go and work on a new project, or to do a specialist role, one just gets forgotten about.

Miss Weekes: What is the remedy? What is the solution?

Ms Thompson: I think there needs to be much more of this kind of openness, you know, there needs to be less of, "Oh, I know DC such and such, he is a really good officer, I worked with him on anti-terrorism", or whatever. And it does seem to me that senior officers tend to pick those individuals who they have worked with in the past, if they are on a new case. So the very opportunity to say, "Right, what skills do we need? How can we get them? How can everybody be given an opportunity to go off and join a new team that is investigating X?", that is not necessarily available to everybody, because there are some very talented women –

Miss Weekes: I am sure there are.

Ms Thompson: One of whom I know has been really behind the development of all this domestic violence work, but will that individual actually be considered for any new investigative cases that might be ongoing?

Mr Azah: To add very quickly, I actually had this conversation with a woman who was going for promotion, and the scenario she pictured for me again goes to the softer end of Beverley's argument, where she was saying that if particularly you have a young family, and that you – as a mother, you need to be at home at certain times, because of the way that the jobs are structured, that you need to be away for certain training events at the weekends, and away for batches, it then means that you are not able to compete by going away and leaving the children behind, even though we have this equity of parenting.

So the structures do not necessarily at this stage lean towards people who are carers within the household, and almost kind of negates the diversity issues which the organisation, and particularly sponsored by the Deputy Commissioner as the diversity issue – and so on the one hand, they are doing diversity, but in terms of evidence, it is very difficult to see that they are subscribing to the whole corporate diversity agenda, because it is almost indirectly discriminating against the core of women, particularly black women, who struggle to make the promotion grades.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: Mr Azah, can I first of all thank you very much indeed for your help and assistance. We have concluded the range of questions we wanted to put to you and your colleagues, but you will recall that in my opening statement I said that at the conclusion of our questions, we would offer you the opportunity to make a closing comment, if you so wish. If you do wish, now is the time.

Mr Azah: Thank you, chair, again for inviting us, and what we do as independent advisors, we do without question, as part of a commitment, really.

I think also, if you indulge me a little bit, I wanted just perhaps – in most of our discussion, we would have talked about some of the difficulties that we would have had as advisors in doing our work, and sometimes it is easy to forget that, you know, the independent advisory process has only been with us for five years in this form.

And if I were allowed to be as forward as I am going to be, then perhaps you may want to consider asking former DAC John Grieve and Chief Superintendent Jeff Braithwaite, who really deliver the concept of independent advice to the Met, because they may have some interesting things to say.

It is also, very quickly, easy to forget that the police service, the Met, in particular, since Lawrence, has learnt quite a few lessons, even though we are advocating that the learning of the lessons has been quite slow.

It is quite key to say that under the stewardship of the Deputy Commissioner, Ian Blair, he has sponsored diversity in a sense; I mean, I am of the view that the Met Police service at some stage felt that it had done Lawrence, and therefore it wanted to ditch Lawrence, and the independent advice as a body has continued to advocate that it continues to keep its eyes on the ball, and that Stephen Lawrence will never be forgotten, and therefore has delivered certain outcomes, and obviously continues to support – and we have been given an assurance by the Deputy Commissioner that independent advice is here to stay.

It is my assertion that the Met Police is one of the best services in the world, and it continues to deliver critical incident training, it continues to set up a whole number of issues, it continues to promote diversity within recruit training, and so on and so forth.

And I would not want my colleagues and I to leave here and not put on the record that since we were invited to become advisors five years ago, that there were only difficult, negative issues: in fact, the Met leads on critical incident training; since Victoria Climbie, it has taken the hydra concept and gone multi-agency, which now includes health professionals as well as social services, and obviously it is continuing to do things in Hendon as a result of Secret Policeman, to ensure that things continue to change.

So I want to put on the record that the learning is slow, but also, under the stewardship of Sir Ian Blair, that things continue to evolve and change, and we are confident that we are here to stay, we are not in the business of allowing them to ignore us, but also we will continue to aid and add to the process so that we continue to deliver equity to all Londoners, and we thank you for the invitation. Thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed. I have some formal words that I need to put on the record to bring this session to a conclusion, but before I do, can I just thank you for pointing us in the direction of additional information, and you made reference to Commander Grieve and others, and we have noted that.

Formally, can I just say that, as with all our witnesses, it may be, once we have heard from other witnesses, that we want to ask some further questions of you and your colleagues.

If we do decide to take that opportunity, then we will do so either by writing to you with a request that you put something in writing, or we might invite you back to some future hearings.

If we need to do that, in any event, we will obviously ensure that we do it in a way which causes you the least possible inconvenience.

But for the moment, all that I need to do is to say thanks for your submission, thank you for your response to our questioning this afternoon, and thank you for the overall contribution that you are making to this Inquiry. So thank you all very much indeed.

Mr Azah: You are welcome, sir. We will be quite happy to come back if you want us to.

Sir William Morris: Yes, indeed. We are adjourned for five or ten minutes.

3.25 pm
(A short break)

On this website:

• Evidence:  Mr J Azah
  Evidence provided by and documents referred to by Mr J Azah of the Independent Advisory Group to the MPS, in his appearance at the Inquiry.