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 It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information.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 the Police Action Lawyers Group, on 27 April 2004.

Sections available here:

• Transcript of public session: Mr A Murphy, Ms J Deighton and Mr R Bhatt of the Police Action Lawyers' Group
  • Questions by Miss Weekes

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

Transcript of public session: Mr A Murphy, Ms J Deighton and Mr R Bhatt of the Police Action Lawyers' Group

Tuesday, 27 April 2004
2.00 pm

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon to you, Mr Murphy, and to your colleagues. Can I just say welcome.

Can I first of all say thank you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence to us this afternoon? Thank you also for letting us have your full written submission which we found extremely helpful.

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

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

Mr Murphy, as you know, we have been asked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and employment matters within the Metropolitan Police Service.

Our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up the organisation. The inquiry that we are conducting is inquisitorial and not adversarial in nature or character.

We are keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendations for further good practice in the MPS, rather than concentrating on making criticisms about the MPS or individuals.

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

At the end of these introductory remarks, Miss Weekes will lead on the questions followed by any supplementary questions that Sir Anthony or myself may have. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment.

We have your very helpful written submission, as I have said, and in that context, most of the points that you have indicated we are very pleased to see, and indeed we will be asking some questions.

We note, for example, the application of employment tribunals, civil law, issues around professional standards and external complaints, and, of course, the police complaints and misconduct regulation is of interest to this Inquiry, and comes within our terms of reference.

We would like to ask you some questions about all this and other materials which are relevant, but before I invite Miss Weekes to commence the questions to you, for the benefit of the transcript, could I invite you to formally introduce yourself and your colleagues to the Inquiry?

Mr Murphy: Good afternoon, Sir Bill. My name is Tony Murphy, and I am a solicitor with Bindman & Partners.

Ms Deighton: I am Jane Deighton, a solicitor at Deighton Guedalla.

Mr Bhatt: I am Raju Bhatt of Bhatt Murphy.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed. Can we go straight into the questioning? I will ask Miss Weekes to lead first, please.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much, welcome to you all. I mirror the chairman's thanks for a very detailed submission from – I think it is an accumulation of a number of you, is that right? It has extensively dealt with a very large number of issues, including your comments upon the new 2004 regulations, the new Police (Reform) Act, and really a large array of issues which I am not going to spend time going into today, but for the purposes of the public session, I would like to deal, if I may, with the following points.

If I can flag up what they are, then I can come back to them: I would like to deal with a little more discussion about the office of constable, and suggestions for reform. I would like to then go on to deal with some additional matters in relation to police regulations, and whether they facilitate quick resolution of workplace conflicts.

I am then going to deal with the disciplinary hearings themselves; the timing/delays for the bringing to an end of disciplinary hearings; code of conduct and other restorative justice resolution-type issues like mediation.

I know that does not cover everything you have covered, but it certainly, for us, would give us some more additional information from the wealth of knowledge that you have.

Can I begin then with building upon what you have already told us within your submissions about the office of constable? It is quite clear from your submissions that you are very much of the view that now is the time, or rather, you may think it is long overdue, that the office of constable could be abolished, and that all police officers have terms and conditions of employment which reflect police staff employee status, effectively.

I would like to just, if I may, bring up on the screen two other submissions that we have heard from that deal with the office of constable. The first is the Police Federation, and it is at PXF 1/11. I just want to have a look at the very wording, the way they have described this, because I would like to have a discussion with you how officers will view this change, and how the public will view this change.

It is all right for lawyers to sit at a desk and say, "This is what we think will be good", but it does need to be practicable, and we need to buy people into the major change if it is going to work.

I am looking at paragraphs 19 down to 20:

"The status of the office of constable has been considered and confirmed by several Royal Commissions and inquiries into policing. Whilst this Inquiry is focused on the internal processes and procedures of the Met, the findings of the Inquiry will undoubtedly have wider impact on the service as a whole. It is therefore our view that should the Inquiry be considering recommendations around the office of constable, that this should not be dealt with in isolation from the wider policing context.

"There is no doubt that managing the service where individual police officers, including the newest constable, have a degree of discretion in the exercise of their power and at times are individually accountable for the exercise of that power, is not straightforward, but simply to assert that moving to providing employment conditions identical to other workers would not resolve the matter. There needs to be a balanced protection between the public and police officers."

I am just going to flag up one more, if I may, and it is IXB 1/9. As you will see, this is part of Assistant Commissioner Blair's submissions to the Inquiry. Paragraph 31:

"It is the view of the Commissioner that it is essential to policing by consent in this country that the historic independence of police constables is maintained and that the preservation of the status of 'office holder' is probably the best method of preserving that position.

"Police officers must remain, first, free from national or local political influence, and, secondly, free from operational interference. To subject officers to the control of the Crown – in practice the government of the day – in the way that employees are subject to the control of their employers would be constitutionally wrong.

"The MPS does not advocate retention of the historic status of the office of constable for its own sake, but because we believe the public rightly regards the independence which that office guarantees as one of the great strengths of our police service across the country, of profound significance to the maintenance of a liberal democracy."

Now I thought it was helpful and right to flag up two of the major issues that concern higher management, and that we would suggest concerns the rank and file, who would be subject to this change.

If police constables up and down the country – because it would not just be the Met, it would be up and down the whole country – were employees, to its full degree, one of the things you would agree with me that they are entitled to have is trade union rights and representation, so they can strike.

Do you think that is what the public want, officers that can go on strike on a Wednesday, when there is probably a crisis occurring on a Saturday? Can you help us on that?

Ms Deighton: Yes, there are really two separate questions, are there not? Do the public want it, and to what extent should whatever the public do dictate what happens – I mean, it could well be argued that the public do not want nurses to be able to strike, or dustcart workers to be able to strike, or teachers or whatever, but they do have that right to strike. One expects that the unions exercise that right only when they feel compelled to do so by the conditions in which they are working, and one would anticipate that a police trade union would be no less mature and sensible about when they exercise that right to strike than any other trade union.

I think it is not necessary to see a police trade union as any different than any other one or public concern about striking as any different – that they may have a concern about any other unionised worker striking.

Miss Weekes: I suppose that takes me one step further: one of the things that the public do have confidence in, and the reputation, certainly, of the English police force abroad is its operational success. We are looking into, of course, management issues, but they are well-known for their operational success. Will that not damage the ability of chief constables and senior management to be able to conduct operational duties to the high standard, or to the respectable standard that they are known for?

Ms Deighton: Well, the NHS is internationally renowned for its operational success, as indeed is the British educational system, and the staff there have the right to strike.

The upside, of course, of giving police officers the right to trade union recognition and the right to strike is – that is an upside, as it were, for them of our central thesis, which is that the law that applies to the rest of us should apply to them.

It would be wholly wrong for us to say, well, they should be subject to the sorts of management controls that we argue for, but they should not have the right to be in a trade union or the rights of access to employment tribunals like the rest of us, so the central thesis is it is very, very important that police officers see the law that pertains to us as pertaining to them as well, and it is exceptionally important for our clients that that happens.

As you will know from our submissions, the sense amongst our clients is that police officers feel themselves to be subject to a less rigorous set of controls, less rigorous laws than our clients themselves are subject to.

Miss Weekes: Is there an alternative to having a radical change? What about going back and having a look at the existing regulations and the existing management processes, and improving those?

Ms Deighton: Well, it is kind of strange that it is seen as a radical change, really, is it not? Because all we are saying is: let the laws that apply to us apply to police officers. In a sense, that could be seen as conservative. It is simple.

Miss Weekes: Officers have access to part-time work, they have access to flexi-time, officers who are women and take pregnancy leave have access to that; they do in fact have access to a good deal of the provisions that are given for employees already, do they not?

Ms Deighton: That is right, and we say let them have access to all of them.

Miss Weekes: What would be the disadvantage if we did not go down the route of changing the terms and conditions, keeping the office of constable as it is, but improving upon management and PR? What is the disadvantage if we do that?

Ms Deighton: Fundamentally, the disadvantage would be that the structural difference – or constitutional difference between police officers and the rest of us would remain, and it is our experience that part of the problem with policing and controlling bad behaviour by police officers is a sense that they are outside the law, and it is certainly a sense that the vast majority of the clients who come to us – and, of course, that is a particular group of people, it is people who consider they have been wronged by the police; they feel that officers feel able to break the law as our clients experience the law, and officers consider that they get away with it.

That sense is a sense that is borne out by the statistics, complaints that are upheld – very few complaints made are upheld, there are very few prosecutions against police officers, particularly for serious crimes such as homicide, et cetera.

It seems to us that a sensible starting point for – not only effective management of the police, but for public confidence in the police, is that the public know that the police will be subject to the same laws that we are subject to, that management systems will be, as our clients experience them in their own places of work, that the criminal law will be applied in the same way, that the civil law will be applied in the same way. So that is the first downside; however well you restructure management and PR, you will not get over that basic problem.

The second downside is there is a real problem with the structures as they are now, and to even begin to eat away at those problems would involve a radical overhauling, so, for instance, the interrelationship between criminal proceedings and disciplinary proceedings, that is set out by statute and Home Office guidelines, as you well know, by authorities; and that is there, and any amount of tampering with that dual system will not actually get the controlling of police officers back to the same sort of level as the controlling of other public servants.

The effective double jeopardy that still applies in practice, if not on paper, would still be there, unless you just said, "We are not going to give the police a special relationship with the criminal law", and insist that disciplinary proceedings are not linked in with criminal proceedings, and do not have to wait for the outcome of criminal proceedings.

You know, that is a big change that would take place automatically were officers made employees like the rest of us.

Miss Weekes: Can I just take out of your helpful explanation, thank you, two issues? We have received consistent evidence that police officers of all rank are subject to complex, rigid and very detailed regulations about how they do behave. I mean, that is the reality, is it not, if you look at the Police (Reform) Act and the two regulations, 2004; they are very strict and very detailed. It is not allowing officers to get away with things; that is the reality, is it not?

Ms Deighton: They are very detailed. I think the strict – whether or not they are strict really depends on how they are enforced, and, from our clients' perspective, no, they are not strict.

So, for instance, if a police officer beats somebody up, they may or may not be suspended. They might not even be suspended. If one of my staff beat somebody up, they would be suspended, that day, and there would be a disciplinary investigation which would – they would have proper trade union representation to us as employers, and that disciplinary matter would be resolved within a few weeks.

But to the victim of – to somebody who the police beat up, or to their family, what they see is something quite different: that officer may even not be suspended. There will be a long delay, and then that officer may or may not be prosecuted, and there will be a further long delay, and that officer statistically will be acquitted. There are all sorts of reasons for that, but that is what happens.

Then and only then can the chief officer come and decide whether or not to discipline that officer, and we may be a year or a year and a half down the line by then, and, of course, as you know, if the officer was acquitted, it is almost incumbent upon the chief officer not to discipline for the assault, because the chief officer has to consider the fairness, et cetera, and if the chief officer does consider discipline for the actual assault – I mean, they may be able to discipline for minor transgressions of the rules around the assault, but we are now about a year and a half or two years down the line, and it is quite possible that, quite rightly, from one point of view, the police officer's representatives may say, "Hold on a minute, there has been a delay of two years, is it really fair that you carry forward with disciplinary proceedings at this stage?"

So I would say strict, no: from the point of view of the victim of that assault, to have to – for those sorts of delays, before a disciplinary process is even effectively begun, it is certainly not strict, no, it is lax.

Miss Weekes: Can I summarise – it is quite clear from our discussions that you are referring to flaws within the present system that would clearly require amendment, and one of the major new initiatives has been the IPCC in relation to public complaint.

I must emphasise, we are concerned with how police officers are treated internally; our emphasis is not with public complaints.

One of the issues that relate back to the whole question of, again, whether one retains the office of constable is to maintain the independence and the public perception that officers will be available and will police the streets for their safety, as long as they themselves are treated equally and have access to fair provisions at work.

Is that not really the summary of where we need to go?

Ms Deighton: It is certainly an aim, but I think that there is no necessary connection between officers being independent and operating independently and operating in the manner that you have just laid out, and also in the manner laid out in the submissions you drew our attention to, operating without political interference, et cetera; there is no necessary relation between those criteria and being an office holder. There is nothing to prevent a contract of employment saying that, in these circumstances, officers will act in these ways, that they should exercise their discretion in these circumstances, this is what they should do when they are on duty, this is what they should do when they are off duty, what we mean by freedom from political interference is X, Y and Z; what we mean by exercising your discretion is X, Y and Z, these are the ways in which your discretion must be fettered, for instance, you must not be governed by racial prejudice, et cetera, et cetera.

It was interesting to me that, in both the submissions you took us to, there was an assumption that independence was necessarily linked with the office of constable, and it seems to me that that is a false assumption.

Miss Weekes: Yes.

Ms Deighton: The independence could be much better maintained and much more transparently maintained and described if it were spelt out in a contract.

Miss Weekes: Of course, you know, as a lawyer, that putting it in a contract and putting it in a statute does not necessarily make it work.

Ms Deighton: No.

Miss Weekes: I am going to move on –

Ms Deighton: But at least we would know what it was.

Miss Weekes: I am going to move on if I may – thank you very much for that, it is obviously an important discussion which we will continue with others.

I move to an important point that you raise in relation to race discrimination allegations against police officers. Can I just ask: you referred to the recommendation that you wanted, that all allegations of race discrimination should be sent to the Independent Police Complaints Commission; was that just for public complaints or was that also internally?

Mr Bhatt: Can I deal with that? The recommendation you are talking about featured in our submissions, I believe, on the regulatory framework for the IPCC.

Miss Weekes: So it is public complaints?

Mr Bhatt: It is about the criteria that will determine what public complaints will be dealt with by the IPCC, whether it is for the purposes of investigation, management or supervision.

Miss Weekes: I am with you. Can I therefore move on to how you might help us with the issue of race and gender issues internally, if you can help, because I know that you have concentrated, very understandably, on the very important issue of how the public views those sorts of complaints.

Do you agree that the Met must, and should, learn to manage issues in relation to race and gender internally?

Mr Bhatt: Undoubtedly.

Miss Weekes: And that, wherever possible, one should avoid an employment tribunal case which involves these difficult but important issues?

Mr Bhatt: Absolutely, it is about the employer taking responsibility.

Miss Weekes: There are still too many employment law cases which reflect officers' disquiet and unhappiness about race and gender issues, because they have access to employment tribunals for those two things. I want to just refer you again to two quotes that will not surprise you, because no doubt you receive criticism about lawyers all the time.

I do not think this is on the system, I may just read it to you:

"You cannot have processes which are Draconian, which are ancient, which take a massive delay, which are all about legalistic lawyers talking here, there and everywhere and making points. If you have a system like that, it does not instil confidence in people to actually open up and deal with things in a way that they should."

The second:

"I have difficulty accepting that lawyers help managers resolve problems, and employees resolve problems. I think it is that – it seems to me to move into a different atmosphere and a different way of dealing with things."

Can you help us with your recommendations of how the Met can use lawyers less?

Mr Bhatt: That is a big question.

Miss Weekes: Well, they are all big here, so do help us.

Mr Bhatt: Can I start in this way, that I agree entirely that, as soon as lawyers enter a picture, that is in itself indicative that the system is not working. Lawyers, in other words, are a symptom of a system not working.

I believe that if the Met is going to keep out the involvement of lawyers, the senior management within the Met have to take greater responsibility, have to take greater ownership of the problems within the system, and essentially, throughout our discussion this afternoon, we have been talking about an arrangement which is not working; that is why we are sitting here, and the history of not just the Metropolitan Police, but the policing of this country, has been about a series of Royal Commissions.

One can go back decades, but every Police Act has been about a crisis in confidence in the police from the public's point of view, resulting in a Royal Commission of inquiry, resulting in some statutory innovations, trying to patch up the problem of confidence.

Ultimately, if you step back and look at that history, one is talking about a crisis in the leadership of the police, a crisis in the management of the police, a lack of will on the part of the hierarchy to take responsibility, to send out a signal, whatever they are saying on paper, to send out a signal through their actions that misconduct will not be tolerated.

That is why, if I can give you just a scenario that we see, a common or garden scenario with our clients: a police officer who comes to the police station with a couple of lads and says, "Those two lads have assaulted me"; a custody officer, a senior officer, can see that it is the lads who were assaulted, can see that there is a problem, but no attempt is made, even at that very initial stage, to take responsibility for the conduct or misconduct.

And one can take that forward through the ranks, through the inspector, through the borough commander, and up to the level of the Commissioner of the Met, where there seems to be an inclination to look for reasons not to take action against errant officers, rather than a will to send out that signal, that misconduct will not be tolerated.

Now I am speaking to you from my experience, which is primarily dealing with members of the public, but if my experience is saying anything, it would suggest that when the senior management in the police are faced with internal problems, questions about confidence on the part of some sections of the police service, in the management, it seems to me that it would not be surprising if there is a similar lack of well-being demonstrated there.

So ultimately, one comes back to the issue of not just the regulatory framework, one can have the most refined and detailed regulatory framework, one can have the most laudable policies, but unless they are acted upon, unless police officers on the ground know that if they make racist remarks to their colleagues, if they are going to abuse their powers in the face of members of the public, if they are going to neglect their duty to members of the public and fellow colleagues alike, then they will be dealt with with the full sanctions available to the management; in the absence of that, I do not think we will be seeing much improvement, and those who suffer will be not just the clients we work with.

Everyone recognises that the police have a very, very difficult job to do, everyone wants the police to be able to do their job properly, but I think there can be no dispute that, if the police are going to do that very difficult job, they need to enjoy the full confidence of the public, and, at the moment, they do not seem to enjoy that.

Miss Weekes: Thank you for that. I do not know whether any of the three of you have specific experience of dealing with police officers who are subject to internal disciplinary processes? I just wanted to ask this: do you consider that the present complex structures of the regulations and the complex internal process which must be gone through helps resolution of such disputes?

Ms Deighton: I have never seen it help.

Miss Weekes: Because part of our terms of reference is to look at recommendations that would better facilitate the resolution of disputes, and disputes could be about management, line management, gender issues, race issues. But however serious those four examples are, it is better impossible to resolve it than to go to law; you would agree?

Ms Deighton: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Can you help me as to this, moving into sort of alternative methods that do not necessarily require lawyers in a disciplinary employment tribunal setting: mediation is one of the issues which has been said to us here, publicly, that the Met would like to look at. What are your views about mediating race cases?

Mr Murphy: Do you mean tribunal cases?

Miss Weekes: Well, mediation would occur before you get to a tribunal.

Mr Murphy: But in the context of tribunal type proceedings?

Ms Deighton: You mean, when the victim is a police officer?

Miss Weekes: Yes. I mean, the fact that it is a race allegation does not mean that it could not be subject to mediation, or does it mean that? I do not know. Can we have your help?

Ms Deighton: I think that it could be possible, but I think that the complainant would have to want it.

Miss Weekes: Mediation is usually by consent of both parties.

Ms Deighton: Yes, usually, but, as you know, it is being forced on parties in county courts, so that would be my first thing. The second thing I would say is, even if there were mediation, there would have to be some management monitoring, so that, as it were, lessons were learned from the incident, and that management initiatives could be taken to make sure that that sort of incident did not happen again, either with a perpetrator, or in the station, or indeed in the service overall. I do not see that there could be a principle objection to mediation.

Miss Weekes: I have asked that question because we are alive to the fact that sometimes management within the Met may become oversensitive if there is a race issue, and overmanage it or, simply, they do not manage it at all. That undoubtedly is unacceptable. Black officers and black staff need to be managed, they need to be dealt with in terms of performance, and if there is an allegation of race, that has to be managed. Some are very serious, others may require immediate resolution and training, because there are degrees of race discrimination, I think you would agree.

And it is that I am looking to, to see whether you can help us in your experience of how other public bodies mediate such sensitive cases. It could involve lawyers, but it does not necessarily have to.

Ms Deighton: I think largely, as you would know, a lot of public bodies, and indeed private bodies, would exclude lawyers until a certain stage, and that seems to be, so long as there is sufficient trade union representation, sensible. Clearly, if things move externally to tribunal hearings, then I would not agree that was sensible.

Miss Weekes: Well, once you have lodged at a tribunal, every individual has a right to be represented, there is no doubt about that.

Ms Deighton: Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: Again, dealing with just another legal aspect, because I would like to come to delays soon: disciplinary hearings. Any of you who have attended them, we have all heard that they are lengthy, lots of legal argument, lots of arguments about abuse of process, sometimes, no doubt, because of the length of time. How can we better improve those processes? Because we are not going to get rid of disciplinary panels.

Mr Murphy: I can deal with this, if you would like. Firstly, we have never been at a disciplinary hearing, because lawyers are excluded under the old regime, and I think there is unlikely to have been a disciplinary hearing since 1st April. But certainly from a public complaints perspective, many of the arguments that I have had experience of are born not out of delay as much as failure of investigating officers to apply the correct procedures.

Now you must remember, these are very senior officers who have intensive training in this area, and yet it is remarkable to find that basic notices have not been served, and that two years of investigation are often wasted as a result of that. There are a number of case studies included in our submissions on that point.

Miss Weekes: Thank you, we have looked at those.

Mr Murphy: So certainly my position would be that, in terms of combatting delays, part of the problem is in ensuring that investigating officers approach the investigation with rigour.

That is not just in terms of getting the procedure right, but also in terms of having an open mind, and having a determination to get to the bottom of the issue, and I think the new regulatory framework for public complaints goes some way to addressing those problems, but, as we have said to you in our submissions, the main difficulty will be that any system, no matter how perfect, is reliant on the will and rigour brought to it by the people within it, and certainly our experience, which is fairly extensive, across the country and across ranks, in relation to public complaints at least, is that the calibre of investigating officers we come across is low.

That is despite the fact that their ranks are often quite senior, but that is often part of the problem, because our perception, at least, is that these officers are often ready to retire, they are not particularly energetic about what they do or committed to it.

Now there are some notable exceptions again, which we explained in the submissions, but certainly my hope for the new system for public complaints is the new role of inspection and guardianship conferred on the IPCC should hopefully go some way to addressing that.

Given that it is estimated the IPCC will only be investigating or even supervising on average 30 cases per year, it is absolutely vital that their recommended good practice trickles down to the vast majority of investigating officers who will be operating without any supervision by the IPCC, and one way of doing that is guardianship and inspection.

My concern is that that will be low on the list, in terms of resources. I think that that should be resisted; it is vital if the majority of our clients and the average member of the public is to feel the benefit of this huge overhaul.

Miss Weekes: Yes.

Ms Deighton: If I could add to that, the other problem with disciplinary hearings is they are like a cross between a criminal court and a civil court; and they should not be. Other employers manage perfectly well with far more informal, less legalistic disciplinary hearings, and in fact manage better: quicker, more transparent, more focused on the employer and the employee.

It seems simply unnecessary to introduce all these sort of bureaucratic, legalistic elements to what is, in effect, an employment disciplinary hearing, and I think that it is quite important to say that.

Miss Weekes: Thank you for that. I will pick up on a word that your colleague mentioned, and that is "delays". We are extremely interested in exploring any assistance for a workable recommendation to reduce what most people would say is often appalling delay, that undoubtedly costs the Met financially, though it also costs them in personnel issues and morale.

Again, I look at this from the police officer/police staff internal point of view, but it does touch upon the issue of delays in the IPCC, and I wonder if all three of you can help on this: you will all have experience about the way cases are listed for employment tribunals, about the way cases are listed in criminal courts, about the way cases are listed in every single tribunal or court of the land, at whatever level.

Someone case manages, someone makes an enquiry into, "How long do you think you will be preparing it?", someone makes an enquiry, "How long do you think you will be in the courtroom setting? How many witnesses?", things like that.

It seems to us at the moment that, within the Met, it may help to have an independent person who is responsible for bringing to book every single disciplinary case, and to enquire about its preparation, the length of time it is taking to bring it to conclusion, and to ensure that cases are listed within a reasonable time, depending upon the category of the case.

Do you disagree with that summary so far?

Ms Deighton: I am sort of anxious about the terminology, because in terms of disciplinary cases, then I would rather there be a structure which said, you know, that the officer is entitled to a hearing within 14 or 21 days, et cetera, and that there would have to be agreement between the union – the officer's representative and the line manager if that was to be extended.

So the contract, or the disciplinary procedures, paced the process, and, if the line manager did not comply with their duties under the disciplinary process, then they themselves would, at their next appraisal, or whatever – that would be an issue, so the line management were being managed.

I think, if the management structures are working properly, there should not be a need for an independent person to come in and oversee it, because part of a manager's job is to make sure they comply with their side of the disciplinary process. If they are not, then they are failing, and they too should be managed, either through competency or disciplinary processes.

While that is sort of being shunted out of the Met independently – of course, it would be very interesting for people like us to see how it is working, but the reality is that managers have to take responsibility for managing.

Miss Weekes: I ought to make it clear that I am referring to where an officer has been served with a notice that disciplinary proceedings will be taken against him, and he is going to appear before a disciplinary panel. It is those in particular we are concerned about, to reduce the timing.

Following on from what you have said, I deliberately used the word "categories" because it may not be practicable for us, sitting here at a desk, to say 14 or 21 days, when this is about corruption, and it is going to take the Department of Professional Standards at least six months to investigate it.

We want a flexible system that does allow someone, independent of the whole process, to question and deal with the listing and the procedure, the moving on of cases; it is the principle I am looking at, whether that is objectionable to you. The detail must be worked out.

Mr Bhatt: What you are proposing there is within the current framework, rather than the employment contract model.

Miss Weekes: Oh yes, it is in the current framework.

Mr Bhatt: Certainly the representations we have made on the new IPCC framework, you will see, involve going a little bit further than you are. What we were proposing was that at the stage of the investigation itself, there should be some – not just a timetable, but a case plan which is agreed by the investigating officer with his or her managers, and with the complainant, so that there is transparency.

A case plan is not a very novel beast in these kinds of contexts, lawyers have to do it all the time; under the best value criteria, the police are used to some sort of a case plan as well, and there is no reason why a fairly detailed but flexible case plan cannot be set out right at the outset of an investigation, which can then carry over.

If a decision is made to bring disciplinary charges at the conclusion of the investigation, then that case plan can be amended to take account of the further steps to the disciplinary hearing.

You are asking whether some sort of external monitor would be helpful; it cannot be unhelpful to have some sort of external monitor, but the key is really transparency, so that the investigating officer, and then the officer who takes over the progress of the disciplinary proceedings, can be held to account to some sort of baseline.

Miss Weekes: There are three things, I think, that come out of what you have said. First of all, independence has not necessarily been introduced by us, the panel, but even if it has, it has been agreed by every single police officer it has been put to. They would like an independent person to ask the Department of Professional Standards, "Where have you got to? What are you doing? When are you going to be ready?"

The second is the question of case management: it sounds as if you have read the Taylor Review, and, if you have not, may I congratulate you, because that is exactly the central recommendation made by the Taylor Review, which is now being fully incorporated by the Met, and I think that must be publicly stated.

Mr Bhatt: I would have to plead my ignorance, I do not even know what the Taylor Review is.

Miss Weekes: The Taylor Review has recommended that every single disciplinary case – I hope I am right in saying it is every single one, but I think it ought to be every single one – has a case manager, and, at the outset, one sets out the remit of that investigation, the purpose, and what the end result is going to be. If you need a budget, why, and what you are going to spend it on. And there are built into that reviews along the way, to check for suitability, proportionality, and whether you still need to run the investigation.

So it is even more detailed than your proposal; it is on the table, and the Met are going to adopt it, and it will make a difference to the way the IPCC run their work, and indeed internally.

Mr Bhatt: I would like to think this will be shared with members of the public who are complainants in these proceedings.

Miss Weekes: I think it is, because, if we read the IPCC, there is an obligation upon them to communicate with both sides.

Mr Murphy: Something which could also be usefully imported from civil proceedings, as you will be aware, is the whole concept of directions, timetable –

Miss Weekes: I was going to come to that point, thank you very much. Do you also agree that for disclosure purposes – because you deal with disclosure in your submissions, it is an extremely important point?

We have received a number of complaints that officers who were disciplined wanted to know certain things within the documentation that would help them, whether it be to promote them as officers of integrity until this disciplinary, or whether they could find out something about the integrity of the person bringing the complaint. It is perfectly right for that individual.

And often, they were not given disclosure. They may not trust the officer in charge of the complaint to give disclosure, but they would like an independent person to deal with disclosure; so again, do you object to that being built into the principle of timing and the way cases are prepared?

Mr Bhatt: We would never argue that police officers should not enjoy all the safeguards of due process, and it seems to me that what you are talking about here is nothing more and nothing less than due process.

Our interest, and the interests of our clients, has never been to disadvantage police officers; on the contrary, all our clients have asked for is that the same rule of law applies to police officers as that which applies to the rest of us.

Mr Murphy: But equally, it should be said, in the interests of parity, under the current and under the previous unreformed system, there is no automatic right of disclosure for a public complainant to receive disclosure of documents, and, therefore, neither should that right be afforded to an officer.

Miss Weekes: I understand that. You have mentioned the case of Green, and I am not going to go into law, this is a public inquiry, and one keeps it simple and not lawyerish, because certainly it does not help anyone, if we are talking about keeping lawyers out of proceedings.

That issue has been raised, as we all know, and the IPCC will look into the whole issue of what can be disclosed to the public, and indeed to the officer concerned.

Ms Deighton: Can I just add on delay that, obviously, there are things that can be done to monitor it and to deal with the procedure which are important, but more important is to look at the causes of delay, and Tony Murphy has mentioned the efficacy of some of the investigating officers, but I think we could also look – going back to the officeholder/employee issues, of course, one of the problems for investigating officers now is the lack of duty on officers to come clean to their employer and the lack of duty on officer witnesses to come clean.

Clearly, if there was that sort of duty, as there is on employees now, to officers, to say if they saw a fellow officer doing something wrong, and to co-operate immediately, and in full, and candidly with any inquiry, then the process would be quicker, and it would be fairer, and we would urge very strongly that that in itself is an important structural change that needs to be made, and one that would flow with according officers employee status.

Miss Weekes: But it is right for me to flag up that one of your personal views was that officers should be brought under the criminal law as much as anybody else; if they are, they have rights under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act that say, "You do not need to speak unless you want to". So is that what you refer to, by coming clean? We ought to remember that.

Ms Deighton: Certainly, and of course our argument is precisely this; that there is no need, simply because police officers are police officers, to jumble the criminal law and employment law.

We say that where an employer reasonably believes that an officer has committed a criminal offence, then two different things should happen: a management process should start, and a criminal process should start, and, just as with any other employee, they should be kept separate.

So in terms of the management process, there should be no right of silence. Officers should be required to comply with the employer/employee duties of full trust and confidence, and to come clean, as should their fellow officers if they witnessed anything.

Entirely separately from that, as with any other employee, a criminal process should start, where, of course, officers should be given precisely the same rights as any other suspect in a criminal investigation.

So long as they are kept separate, they would be treated the same as other employees, and there would be no danger; the other, of course, added advantage is that they would be running in tandem and the current delays caused by holding back the disciplinary process until the criminal process is over would be eradicated.

Miss Weekes: So you would agree with fast track, that you could have certain officers sacked on the spot for certain incidents of gross misconduct, rather than simply await the CPS decision to prosecute?

Ms Deighton: Certainly. I think the Met should have a disciplinary code which sets out what offences may amount to gross misconduct, and what should happen to an officer who is reasonably believed to have committed gross misconduct, along the lines of any other public body.

Miss Weekes: You know there is a fast track provision available at the moment, which is somewhat underused?

Ms Deighton: Yes.

Miss Weekes: And, in fairness, what has happened is that, to be fair to the officer who is being considered for criminal proceedings, there is a waiting time, until the close of those criminal proceedings, before taking disciplinary proceedings.

Ms Deighton: It seems to us that that is simply unnecessary. Everybody else in this country is dealt with, discipline and criminal, in parallel, it works fine, and dealing with them in tandem creates a lot of the difficulties that you have been enquiring into in this Inquiry.

Miss Weekes: My last area of questions, if I may, quite shortly, is the code of conduct, quite important. We might usefully bring that up, if we may, on the screen for you: it is INQ 104/31. Just cast your eye over this as we go through it. We have honesty and integrity, fairness and impartiality – you have looked at this before, I know – politeness and tolerance, use of force and abuse of authority, over the page, performance of duties, lawful orders, confidentiality, criminal offences, sobriety, appearance, general conduct.

I did that deliberately to flag up your recommendation that there is no specific reference to racist behaviour, race discrimination being part of the code.

Mr Murphy: It was removed in the post 1999 model.

Miss Weekes: It certainly is not here now, and this is the up-to-date one, because it is attached to the new regulations and the Police (Reform) Act.

Mr Murphy: That is right.

Miss Weekes: What is the advantage of putting it into the code? There may not be any, I just would like your view.

Mr Murphy: Well, we were interested in the fact that it was in the previous code as a specific offence, and then it was removed without any consultation or discussion that we were aware of. Interestingly, it was removed at a time when racism in the police was at its most public, if you like.

I suppose the rationale, we believe, behind including it is to remind officers of the importance of acting in a nonracially discriminatory way in the performance of all of their duties. If that reminder was not necessary pre-1999, given everything that has happened since, it certainly seems to be relevant post-1999, although I suppose you could argue that because of the consciousness raising that occurred because of the various inquiries and the MacPherson report, maybe not.

I mean, we raised it because we could not understand why it was thought relevant before and then not now, and our concern is, because the experience of our clients is that they continue to suffer racist treatment from officers, that the reminder is still necessary; I think that sums up our view.

Miss Weekes: My last point is this, because I am going to round up now: since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, race has had an understandably high agenda, but there are gender issues, religious issues, disability issues, sexual orientation issues, and they all come to play in the equal treatment directive which is now part of the law of this country.

Well, if you are going to put race in, why not put everything else?

Mr Murphy: Well, I do not think we would have any objection to a catch-all provision dealing with equal treatment generally, flagging up the particular areas of concerns, I do not think we could have any objection to that.

Miss Weekes: Clearly it is not just about race.

Mr Murphy: Yes, I think we would agree with that.

Miss Weekes: Thank you.

Sir William Morris: Mr Murphy, that, I think, concludes the range of questions that we wanted to put to you as a panel this afternoon, but during my introduction, I said that, before we conclude, I would provide you with the opportunity to make any closing comments which you may wish to make. If you do, then this is your moment.

Mr Murphy: Well, I wonder if I could just say two things, then maybe my colleagues would also like to chip in.

Firstly, in relation to race, just Ms Weekes' last point, it is true to say that race has had a very high profile in recent years. However, it is also true to say that the majority of clients who come through our doors are from black and ethnic minority communities, that is not to undermine the importance of equal treatment throughout the officers' role; however, I think that is why it is foremost in our minds, to some extent, although, as I say, that is not to undermine the importance of any of the other equal treatment issues.

The second point is – and I am reluctant to appear defensive of lawyers, but in terms of public complaints, I would like to emphasise the essential role we believe lawyers play in helping members of the public, particularly those who may not be particularly educated or articulate, in accessing that system. Indeed, I had a case just the other week with a client who was extremely articulate and very able, and still found it virtually impossible to negotiate the labyrinthine complaints system, and it was only with my involvement that we had any resolution, interestingly, through mediation. However, even that, I think, he would have found, as a very able, as I say, and articulate person, difficult to manage.

So while we all support creative ways of problem solving, because, not least, that is what our clients wish to achieve, I do think lawyers play an important role; certainly I only deal with public complaints, but in public complaints and the more complex ones, because the system is simply incredibly difficult to negotiate without one, and they are often met with unhelpful investigating officers, as I have explained. That is all I have to say, thank you.

Ms Deighton: I think I would just like to add, as we are talking about cutting out lawyers, that I think not only would the process be more effective and transparent, were officers to be made employees, and their duties and their discretions outlined expressly in contracts, but I think it could also be the start of a cultural change, which is something less tangible, which is something that would be behind the sort of management initiatives that Raju and Tony were talking about, and might begin to gnaw away at that sense that our clients have, that the police officers somehow feel that they are different from them, and they are untouchable by our clients, and the canteen culture, and the sorts of – well, it might be a good starting point for a positive and effective cultural change.

Sir William Morris: Right, thank you very much indeed. Just some closing words from me, and I say this to all our witnesses: once we have heard from other witnesses, it might just be necessary for us to ask you to come back and answer a few more questions. Alternatively, if we feel we need to hear further from you, we might also decide to write with specific issues that we want you to address in writing.

In any event, whether further oral evidence or written evidence, we will do so in a way which causes you the least possible inconvenience.

Those are my formal words; my added words are to say on behalf of the panel thank you for your written submission, thank you for your responses this afternoon, and thank you for the contribution that yourselves personally and the organisation are making to the work of the Inquiry. Thank you very much.

3.10 pm
(A short break)

On this website:

• Evidence: Police Action Lawyers Group
  Evidence provided by and documents referred to by the Police Action Lawyers Group in its appearance at the Inquiry.