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Britain’s most senior police officer has blamed Home Office foot-dragging for a failure to change the rules to allow forces to sack officers who fail vetting procedures.
The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said civil servants had known about the problem for more than 20 years, leaving the force “stuck” with officers not fit to serve the public.
On Tuesday, the high court ruled that the Met’s policy of sacking officers who fail their vetting was unlawful.
Asked if it was a failure of his leadership, Rowley said: “It’s a failure of the Home Office officials to sort the regulations out.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Rowley said he had the backing of successive home secretaries to change the rules to allow police forces to sack officers accused of offences before those allegations have been tried in court.
But he said officials had delayed implementing changes. He said: “I’ve had all home secretaries in the last two years saying ‘yeah, we’ll fix this’, and they’ve asked officials to do it. I could see officials were being slow and not getting on with it.
“Throughout this whole process I’ve seen complete commitment and support from Suella Braverman, James Cleverly and Yvette Cooper to get this fixed. I’m disappointed that officials have dragged their feet. It’s only in the last few days they’ve actually started listening to us about what’s required to fix this, so that we can deal expeditiously and properly with people who aren’t fit to wear a uniform.”
Rowley cited a letter in Wednesday’s Times by three retired senior officers, including one of his predecessors, Ian Blair, that said they had raised the issue with the Home Office 25 years ago.
It said: “We needed the ability to remove officers who had failed vetting and subsequent appeal procedures. That nothing has changed 25 years later is bewildering. Ministers should do what their predecessors failed to do and make clear that vetting failure is a sackable offence.”
Rowley said: “People have been pushing for the rules to change for 20-odd years – policing has been stuck.”
On Tuesday a Home Office spokesperson said the government was “acting rapidly” to introduce new rules to help forces sack officers who could not pass vetting.
Asked if he had been given a timeline for changes to the rules, Rowley said: “We haven’t yet, but we need this in weeks. It needs to be a process which is practical and expeditious.”
The Guardian revealed it may cost the Met up to £7m a year to sideline officers unfit to serve by keeping them on special leave. Rowley said: “It’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money, paying somebody to sit at home but they won’t be policing the streets.” Asked how much it would cost, he said: “It will go to millions of pounds. It depends how long this takes to fix.”
More than 100 officers are having their vetting reviewed, while a further 29 have lost their vetting status and face a dismissal hearing. Rowley revealed most of these cases related to “sexually bad attitudes towards women and girls [and] violence towards women”.
The cases include Sgt Lino Di Maria, a Met officer who has faced allegations of rape and improper conduct towards women. On Tuesday, the high court upheld his appeal against the Met’s decision to sack him before he had been tried for the charges.
Referring to the case, Rowley said: “When you’ve got multiple women making different allegations against an individual, you start to put up a pattern of information that says this person is not sufficiently trustworthy with women to be a police officer.”
Asked if women could trust Met officers, Rowley said: “The Metropolitan police of today is robust in terms of our own integrity and tackling these issues, even when the law is uncertain and untested. We’’re putting pressure back on the Home Office now. We’re improving every day in terms of the results that we’re delivering for women and girls.”
