Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: The escalation of violence against women and girls, HC 131
Wednesday 21 February 2024
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 21 February 2024.
Members present: Caroline Nokes (Chair); Dr Lisa Cameron; Elliot Colburn; Dame Jackie Doyle-Price; Carolyn Harris; Kim Johnson, Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Questions 115 - 229
Witnesses
I: Kathryn Billing, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Lead, National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC); Daren Mochrie, Chair, The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE); and Catherine Hinwood OBE, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Programme Director, NHS England.
II: Assistant Chief Constable Samantha Millar, Strategic Programme Director, VAWG, National Police Chiefs’ Council; and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy, Professionalism Lead, Metropolitan Police Service.
Witnesses: Kathryn Billing, Daren Mochrie and Catherine Hinwood.
Q115 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to this afternoon’s meeting of the Women and Equalities Committee and a further evidence session into our inquiry on the escalation of violence against women and girls. This afternoon in our first panel we have Daren Mochrie, chair of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, Catherine Hinwood, domestic abuse and sexual violence programme director at NHS England, and Kath Billing, the equality, diversity, and inclusion lead at the National Fire Chiefs Council and chief fire officer for Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service.
As is usual, members of the Committee will ask you questions in turn. They will always indicate which witness they wish to answer, but if at any point any of you wish to come in and add something to an answer that somebody else has already given then please indicate and I will endeavour to bring you in.
Catherine, there have been a significant number of reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault and abuse, particularly in mental health trusts, which have involved both patients and staff. What steps are the NHS leadership taking to tackle this and why have so many people been failed?
Catherine Hinwood: Thank you for the opportunity to come and give evidence today. Also thank you to the Committee for shining a light on what is one of society’s most difficult issues, which is the perpetration of domestic abuse and sexual violence. I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank all the really brave survivors and victims who have shared their stories, both in the media and here before this Committee, to also shine a light on these issues.
Let me be clear that many of the stories that we have heard involve criminal conduct. Many of the stories are absolutely shocking. In addition to thanking those survivors who have brought their stories forward, I want to encourage those who feel able to to report to the relevant NHS organisations and the police if they feel able to and to seek the support that they need.
Every NHS trust and organisation already has in place policies that relate to safeguarding, conduct and discipline. These are patient safety issues, safeguarding issues and employment issues. Trusts should be following those robust measures that they already have in place. If it is the case that any organisation and any survivor has reported the abuse or assault and have not had an adequate response, I would urge them to do everything that they can to take up complaints and whistleblowing processes. I wanted to start out by saying that.
There is clearly a lot of work to do and there are a couple of things that we have focused in on over the last year or so to really help systems and survivors to have a voice to share their stories and to tackle these issues, which are, frankly, issues that are endemic within society. We have had three specific focuses.
The first one has been on infrastructure. You heard evidence from our brilliant colleagues in Surviving in Scrubs and the working party on sexual misconduct in surgery in a separate session. You heard a lot of their views about things that need to change for people to feel more confident in coming forward and reporting sexual abuse and misconduct, particularly members of staff. We have been working with them over the last year or so and worked with them to think about what kind of framework the healthcare system needs to tackle this.
The introduction of the sexual safety charter is the first thing that we have done. Alongside now more than 250 organisations that have signed up to this charter, which needs to be implemented in July of this year, NHS England has taken a national leadership role in drafting model policies, working with colleagues with lived experience across the professions and systems, that we are going to share with systems to adapt and adopt. We are working on training infrastructure that we will also share with systems. We are trying to put the framework in place in relation to staff.
Q116 Chair: You have been working on the framework for a year.
Catherine Hinwood: One thing that we heard really clearly from Surviving in Scrubs and from Tamzin and Chelcie was that we need to work with colleagues to understand some of the issues. The framework exists. The framework was set out in September of last year, so we are working on the implementation of it and there are commitments in there in relation to revised policies and training.
There is a data commitment. That is one other area that we have really focused in on. We have ensured that, in the NHS staff survey, there is a question relating to sexual harassment. There is also a question in the national education and training survey and a question in the NHS England staff survey. That data will be released in early March, so we will have for the first time, in the biggest employer in Europe, a real baseline of staff experience in relation to sexual harassment.
Q117 Chair: Should the biggest employer in Europe be treating this with more urgency?
Catherine Hinwood: There are other things that we have also put in place. We have asked every single ICB and trust to put in place domestic abuse and sexual violence leaders at an executive level to really focus in on what it is that needs to happen in terms of culture change and in every single organisation.
The final thing that we have done, specifically in relation to mental health trusts, is that we have worked with clinicians, service users and people with lived experience to create a new culture change improvement programme that was launched this month. That focuses in particular on leadership oversight and we have sexual safety embedded in there. That is just about to be rolled out and we will be able to share the standards with you shortly.
Q118 Kim Johnson: I wanted to pick up on the issue that you raised, saying that all NHS trusts will have policies and procedures that they should be operating to. If somebody had experienced sexual abuse in any way and at the first hurdle had not been listened to because of the culture of an organisation, would you expect somebody to go back a second time and try to get some kind of support from the organisation when they had taken an awful lot of courage to go in the first time? What do you think needs to happen to ensure that policies and procedures are implemented to the word that is identified in the policies?
Catherine Hinwood: You are absolutely right. There has been way too much of a burden on survivors to have to do the work themselves, particularly in relation to gathering data.
Q119 Chair: Surviving in Scrubs is a perfect example of the survivors collecting the data on the NHS’s behalf.
Catherine Hinwood: Absolutely, yes. That is why we have introduced now the questions into the NHS staff survey. One thing that we are thinking about in relation to the commitment in the sexual safety charter is what kind of reporting structures might be helpful to allow survivors to feel more confident in reporting. We are learning from some of the work that universities and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, for example, have done on anonymous reporting infrastructures.
You can see that people feel much more comfortable reporting and sharing their stories in an anonymous way to people such as Surviving in Scrubs than they do coming forward and putting their name to complaints in so many instances. Unfortunately, this is something that you see not just in the NHS but across society and employers. We have to do more to ensure that victims have confidence in the system that they are going to be seen, heard and believed.
Q120 Chair: I think that it is Crimestoppers that provides an anonymous reporting/whistleblowing service. Is the NHS going to work with them to provide that so you can just get the data?
Catherine Hinwood: There are already some anonymous infrastructures that members of staff and the public can utilise. There is the Freedom to Speak Up guidance. There are of course whistleblowing processes as well. Could you say more about the Crimestoppers suggestion?
Q121 Chair: I am very conscious that Crimestoppers can provide an anonymous whistleblowing service. I wondered whether that would engender more confidence if it was outside the NHS. The evidence that we heard from particularly Surviving in Scrubs was that they did not have any confidence in reporting. They did not think that there was any point in reporting. If they did report, there would be no action. If there is a genuine interest in collecting the data, would it be better done outside of the NHS?
Catherine Hinwood: That is certainly one option. We are working with our expert advisory group—that includes Surviving in Scrubs and the working party on sexual misconduct in surgery—thinking about what reporting infrastructures help to build confidence in the system. I gave the example of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. It has built an anonymous data reporting tool that allows people to report through a portal about their experience anonymously. That is certainly one option that we have been looking at. There are other areas, such as the prison service, for example, which I understand has a particular helpline. There are lots of different ways that you can do things to build an infrastructure around anonymous reporting.
Q122 Chair: How long does it take to think?
Catherine Hinwood: We need to implement everything by July. We want to get this right; we need to get this right.
Q123 Chair: Will there be an anonymous reporting system in place in July?
Catherine Hinwood: That is absolutely our intention. It is a key part of the sexual safety charter. We need to work across systems as well. NHS England can do something individually, so we are thinking about what we can do. For some of the requirements, in terms of building a cross-system infrastructure, we need to work with trusts, professions, regulators and systems to ensure that there is something that is comprehensive that works for everyone across the system. Absolutely, it is one of our key priorities.
Q124 Chair: I want to understand where the buck stops. What power does NHS England have to say to individual trusts, “You are going to do this. Here is the solution. This is the one system that is going to work across everything”, whether it be the mental health trusts, where we can see that there is a massive problem, or with—let us go with GP practices or dentistry. What point does somebody carry the can for this and say, “This is what is going to happen?” How close are we to that decision?
Catherine Hinwood: There are a number of elements to that. If, for example, a trust does not comply with its contractual requirements around meeting guidelines, policies and the law, the organisation that commissions that trust has contractual levers to intervene. That might be an integrated care board, for example. For independent providers it is slightly different. You also have levers around provider licence conditions. The first step is for the commissioner to think about contractual and licence requirements. There is reporting in terms of CQC regulations, so the CQC and regulators have a role here as well.
Q125 Chair: If I am a nurse working in a mental health trust, should I not be able to point at “that body there”, rather than saying, “It might be the integrated care board that should have commissioned it”, or “The CQC should be doing this”, or whoever? Should there not be one place where a nurse who feels unsafe in a mental health ward can know, “This is where I can report and that is who is going to be responsible”?
Catherine Hinwood: You are right. Some of the reporting infrastructures are difficult for people to understand on the ground. One commitment that we have made in relation to the implementation of the charter is to try to really clarify that for people. It becomes problematic when regulators are involved as well, in terms of reporting to professions, but it is really clear that, if a nurse does not feel safe at work, the route initially for them to report that is through that workplace’s infrastructure.
Q126 Chair: Daren, did you want to say something on that?
Daren Mochrie: Catherine picked up the points I was going to make around the regulators. There is the Care Quality Commission that Catherine has mentioned. There is the Health Services Safety Investigations Body as well. I think that what you are asking for is whether that is a difficult landscape for staff to navigate because there are so many different avenues.
Q127 Chair: Yes, that is exactly what I am asking.
Daren Mochrie: Not only am I the chair of AACE, I am also the chief executive of the North West Ambulance Service, which is one of the big ambulance services up north. In my experience, some staff may approach the CQC direct; some staff may go through Freedom to Speak Up; some staff may go through a line manager. Having different avenues is probably helpful in some cases as well, if I am being honest.
Q128 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: You referred to criminal law. Clearly, where someone has been victim of sexual violence, they have to be the ones comfortable enough to pursue it criminally. Nevertheless, the support structures that are around them have a big influence on that.
I have been made aware of cases where patients have been victims of serious sexual assault in hospitals. Ultimately, if you are a patient in hospital you are in a very vulnerable position. You are not in a position to actually call the police if you are subject to sustained sexual violence attacks. The first person you are going to report that to is additional practitioners who are looking after you.
I have had reports from Rape Crisis that all too often these things are just handled by HR within the NHS, rather than the NHS properly gripping that this is a criminal matter and a crime has been committed while someone is in the care of that institution. Could you say a little bit more about that and in terms of where you think the NHS’s responsibility should start and end with regards to supporting a criminal investigation in those circumstances?
Catherine Hinwood: It is really complex in terms of the NHS’s role, other than the starting point that, if there is a criminal offence that has been committed, policies ought to be clear at the moment about the role of the police and bringing police in to investigate, certainly if a patient wants that to happen. There are instances when they may not. The policies that we are developing at the moment around sexual misconduct in particular set out very clearly the role of the police and the role of criminal justice investigations. That is in a sexual misconduct context. Safeguarding policies cover this as well and they ought to be followed.
Q129 Chair: Is it ought to be or are? Can you sit here and say that you are confident that those policies are clear and are followed?
Catherine Hinwood: I am confident that they are clear. You have certainly heard evidence that they are not being followed in certain circumstances.
Q130 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: In order for us to have confidence that these matters are being handled effectively by the NHS, we need to have confidence in the procedures that should be followed. On the evidence you have just given the Chair, I am not sure that we can be, because it all seems a bit wishy-washy and voluntary.
I would like to relate this to an experience we have had here in Parliament. You are absolutely right when it comes to sexual violence offences. People are very reticent to report them to criminal justice just because the process is extremely uncomfortable to follow through and the chances of conviction are so low. There is a judgment call. For somebody who is a patient, for example, who is in a very vulnerable position, it is going to be an even more difficult judgment.
We had the same thing here in Parliament with recognising that we had issues with sexual offences and the power imbalance that might be at play between complainants and offenders and the chances of getting a successful prosecution. We established our own completely separate and independent way of making investigations and, being frank, the burden of proof is a lot less. There is an element of accountability, quite public accountability, for people’s actions, which is prompter and probably more public than a criminal investigation.
If we are going to have integrity, recognising that we are talking about a public service that is very male-dominated and deals with very vulnerable people, is there not a case for something very independent and very clear that complainants can go to?
Catherine Hinwood: Absolutely, and we are looking at that at the moment in the context of the implementation of the charter with, again, professions and colleagues across the system. You are right. We are trying to learn from models that exist in other areas. We have been working really closely with our ambulance service colleagues in understanding some of the successes that they have had in implementing their sexual safety charter. London Ambulance Service in particular has done some really good work there.
I wanted to go back to your earlier point though around support for victims. One of the really critical things that we need to ensure—Rape Crisis does a fantastic job—is the embedding of the independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers into healthcare settings and in sexual assault referral centres. You are right: it is really important that someone who has experienced sexual abuse or sexual violence has access immediately to independent support, so that they are not bearing the burden themselves. I wanted to acknowledge that.
Q131 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: My biggest concern is those people who are actually experiencing healthcare or are vulnerable, which is why the evidence about mental health trusts is really instructive. Clearly, we are talking about a large number of institutions across the country that are delivering healthcare and they are all very different. Do you have a handle on perhaps any examples of organisations that are doing this really well or really badly?
Catherine Hinwood: One thing that NHS England is doing is pulling together areas that are working on this. We have a domestic abuse and sexual violence lead now in every integrated care board and most trusts across the country. We have been bringing them together to learn in terms of things that have worked and things that have not worked on sexual safety policies, implementation and training. London Ambulance Service colleagues, for example, have come and presented to us recently on some of the lessons that they have been learning on sexual safety. I do not know, Daren, whether you wanted to talk particularly about their work.
Q132 Chair: We will come to Daren and some questions on their work in due course. Kath, can I turn to you? It is the same question. We have seen some horrific reports about where it has gone horribly wrong in the fire service. I could point at south Wales. I could talk about Tyne and Wear or I could focus a little bit closer to home for me and ask about Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service. We know from media reports, and indeed the report that was done into Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service, that cultural misogyny is ingrained and endemic in the service.
Across the other ones, who should be responsible? Who should ultimately be answerable when there is a report that finds that your fire service is culturally misogynistic and sexist? Should it be the chief fire officer? Should it be the chair of the fire authority? Where should responsibility sit?
Kathryn Billing: As chief officer of Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, the responsibility and accountability ultimately lies with me, absolutely supported by my fire authority. It lies with me and I have been very clear as the chief of my own service that I recognise each and every single one of those reports that we have seen and the disgusting behaviour that has been reported.
As my colleague said, absolutely courageously, I certainly would not sit here and provide anybody with any assurance that that behaviour has not happened in my service. You have a collective unity across chief fire officers to say, “We absolutely fully accept each and every one of those reports and accept that that could be the position within our own services”. That really is what is driving us to enforce that change.
Q133 Chair: I am sorry. It sounds like I am picking on you, but it is a great example. You are a chief fire officer, so how do you drive change so that you can sit there and know that women coming into work in Devon and Cornwall fire service will be safe, treated with respect and on an equal basis with their colleagues?
Kathryn Billing: Just for the record, we have not taken over Devon yet.
Chair: Sorry, I have just given you Devon.
Kathryn Billing: Thank you. For me, No. 1 is that, as I have set out quite clearly, if we find inappropriate behaviour, we will deal with it in the most appropriate way. I have terminated the employment of firefighters that have not met the standards that we expect in relation to conduct and behaviour. Equally, we have to remember that the majority of firefighters and people that work in fire and rescue services are really good people. We have to consider whether we have actually given them the opportunity to learn, understand and challenge appropriately.
As the National Fire Chiefs Council, we are now developing our mechanisms by which we can develop our staff. There are leadership programmes that begin to help and assure us that that our people are being trained in the right way to challenge inappropriate behaviour. It is not just a challenge. It is then about how we ensure that people are confident that, as my colleague said, investigations are undertaken in the right way. There is a lot of work that we are doing across the fire sector, individually but also as part of the National Fire Chiefs Council, to develop training but also develop challenging behaviour toolkits. We are using best practice from other organisations. We are not making this up ourselves. We are also developing a culture dashboard methodology, so that we can see where we are making a difference positively or where there are areas that we need to target and address with further measures.
Can I come back to the reporting lines though as well? In relation to reporting lines, although the National Fire Chiefs Council cannot mandate independent reporting, as I said, there is a huge commitment from chief fire officers. We made that commitment last year at our March meeting. In September, we did a survey around independent reporting lines, and there were 73% responses from our fire and rescue services—that is 36—that said that they had already put independent reporting lines in place. There were 13—that is 27%—that said that they are working on the independent reporting lines. We recognise that that independence is something that at the moment we need, because we do not have the culture there where people feel comfortable to necessarily report and be assured that those investigations will be conducted in the appropriate way.
Q134 Chair: What role does the inspectorate have?
Kathryn Billing: The inspectorate plays a crucial role. It also has its own independent reporting line, which I absolutely know firsthand works. People can independently report in and they will take that into the fire authority. Then they will require an indication of action that has been undertaken and updates on that. The inspectorate plays an incredible role. It has just undertaken a thematic review of misconduct within fire and rescue services, following the spotlight report last year that it produced. It also has its ongoing inspections. It is on round 3 at the moment. One of those pillars that it looks at is around people, values and culture.
Q135 Chair: Do you have any sense of what proportion of an inspection that would make up for? I am particularly thinking about Wilts and Dorset, where the inspectorate rated it as good just weeks before ITV’s exposé, which revealed firefighters asking female firefighters for sexual favours at the scene of a fire and dead women being photographed by firefighters, and yet the inspectorate thought that that was a good service.
Kathryn Billing: That is why we are clear that this is not just a one answer fits all. It has to be done collaboratively. The inspectorate is very clear that it comes in and make its judgments based on the conversations it has with people. It is a snapshot but I certainly can say that, from my perspective, it has done a rigorous inspection and highlighted the areas of concern within my service.
Q136 Chair: If it was a snapshot, it does not look like it was a very good camera in Wiltshire, does it?
Kathryn Billing: I certainly would not want to comment on their inspection. However, I would say that His Majesty’s inspectorate is one element of assurance. I will come back to my original statement, which is that the chief fire officer, and indeed the fire authority, are the people that should be wholly accountable. Through the National Fire Chiefs Council, we are now trying to support chief fire officers to have the data and information that will allow them to understand and provide that level of assurance around culture within their fire services.
Q137 Chair: Is there any problem with fire authorities that, from a casual glance, might look a little bit like an old boys’ club?
Kathryn Billing: I would suggest not, provided, again, that you have the right training. I look at my scrutiny in my cabinet. I know that they have undertaken training. They absolutely know my expectations of culture and behaviour. They are very aware of the national picture of culture and behaviour in fire and rescue services. They have taken the time to ensure that they are asking me the right questions and that I can provide them with the level of assurance that I would need to. I am sure that that is being undertaken across different governance models within fire and rescue services.
Q138 Chair: I could observe that I can find examples where men outnumber women on fire authorities by two to one, which seems to be slightly heavily male-biased.
I wanted to ask a final question about White Ribbon locations, which are safe havens for women fleeing domestic abuse or immediate danger. How many White Ribbon accredited stations have serving staff who have been accused of sexual assault or harassment?
Kathryn Billing: I do not have that information but, if it is available, I can provide that back to the Committee.
Q139 Chair: That would be useful. If a station is accredited as a White Ribbon station, it is a place of safety for women. What specific steps are taken to make sure that there are no officers serving who have any record of sexual assault or harassment? I would like to know, if these are places of safety for women, what additional measures go in to scrutinise and check that there is enough rigour there.
Kathryn Billing: The CEO of White Ribbon, Anthea Sully, chairs the independent panel that has been set up by the National Fire Chiefs Council.
Q140 Chair: Can you ask her? That would be really helpful. Thank you.
Kathryn Billing: Absolutely, yes. I am sure that that is a certainly a question that she is asking.
Q141 Chair: Daren, sorry, it is your turn. We have heard the NHS in particular saying that the ambulance service can provide a model that it would seek to follow. What particular learnings have there been following some, again, horrendous reports of sexual harassment and abuse in the ambulance service?
Daren Mochrie: Through the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, we recognised a few years ago that there were too many cases being highlighted that were just unacceptable in the workplace. Through the association, we appointed a programme lead for violence and aggression. We appointed a programme lead for behaviour, sexual safety and misogyny across the ambulance sector. Bron and Adam have been taking forward a lot of work in this space, working closely with NHS England and the chief allied health professions officer as well.
We have produced a number of documents around best practice and guidance. We hope that ambulance trusts across not just England but the UK take on board those best practice documents and adopt them within their organisations. We are not going to stop at that. We are now going to work with colleagues across the sector, colleagues across the National Police Chiefs’ Council, National Fire Chiefs Council, NHS England and others, to continue to make sure that we are making progress in some of the areas that we are describing today at the Committee.
One case is far too many as far as we are concerned, whether that is staff within the organisation on staff, patients on staff or staff on patients, because it works many different ways, sadly, does it not, nowadays? Some of our call handlers will say that they are sexually abused down the phone on many occasions when they take 999 calls, for example. How do we have an approach that gives them the support that they need? How do we give them the opportunity to be able to speak up as and when they need to be able to speak up? How do we give them confidence that, when people speak up, we are actually going to do something about it?
We have been looking at lots of different things. I will not repeat what other have said, but it is about me as the chief executive or the chair of AACE setting the tone around values and behaviours and ensuring that we have the right systems and processes, governance and assurance in place. How do we make sure that leaders and staff are trained in some of these difficult things that they need to deal with and how do we keep that momentum going? Bron and Adam, as I say, have been doing a lot of work supporting us in that space.
We worked very closely recently with NHS England on the culture review into the ambulance sector, which was only just published last week. There are six recommendations in that. I have been in the job now 33 years in ambulance and 35 in the NHS. For too many years now we have focused on operational response time and demand challenges and perhaps not focused on some of the other things that we need to be focusing on, whether that is culture, equality and diversity, or whatever the case may be. We are now pleased to see that that is recognised within some of the six recommendations within this report, so we can closely work with NHS England to get that balance right going forward.
Q142 Chair: What specific data are you collecting?
Daren Mochrie: We look at lots of different bits of data. We use the NHS staff survey as one of the biggest pieces of data. We look at that. We look at other data, such as pulse surveys. That is a bit similar to the staff survey. Internationally, we look at other organisations. We know that Ambulance Victoria in Melbourne had similar challenges to some of the experiences we see here in the UK. We have looked at police and fire reports more recently.
We had our ambulance leadership conference last year. We had 500 staff and leaders at that conference and the morning session was focused on nothing but the Baroness Casey report and our Freedom to Speak Up NHS guardians’ report. Nazir Afzal, who did the report into the London Fire Brigade, came and spoke to us about what more we could do within the sector. We look at lots of different data and then try to triangulate it to make sure we are focusing in on the right things.
Q143 Dr Cameron: My questions are a bit more about culture behind these issues. It is a question for each of you in the first instance. Have your services been putting the safety of members of the public at risk by not tackling issues of sexual assault and harassment? For example, is someone who has just been sexually assaulted by a colleague going to be in the best mental state to carry out their very important job effectively?
Catherine Hinwood: That is a really great point and one reason that the programme that I lead has focused first on sexual safety of our staff and staff experiencing domestic abuse as well. Alongside the sexual safety charter and the model policies that we are putting out in terms of sexual misconduct, we are also doing the same for staff who experience domestic abuse. We are really clear that we have to make sure that, as I guess sometimes the expression is, we have our own house in order in terms of supporting staff, ensuring that we are dealing effectively with any perpetrators within the system, so that then any risks to patient safety that might exist there can be mitigated against. You are absolutely right.
Daren Mochrie: Could you repeat the question? I missed the first part.
Q144 Dr Cameron: It is about the safety of members of the public if those who are working in the organisation have been subject to sexual harassment and it has not been tackled. What impact does it have on the wellbeing of staff trying to do their job? Is that something that you are taking seriously and tackling?
Daren Mochrie: I think that what you are asking is about when ambulance staff perhaps deal with domestic abuse and really difficult cases out in the community. Somebody touched upon it earlier on, around the fact that we do a lot now in terms of safeguarding training for our staff. Staff are now much more well trained than I was, way back in the early 1990s when I was a young paramedic, in being able to recognise issues and know how to report safeguarding referrals. Now we have much more support within the ambulance sector than we have ever had around how we support members of staff when they come across difficult scenes, scenarios or cases, whether that be children, adults or whatever it might be.
Have we got it right? We probably have not. There will be cases where it maybe does not happen as well as it could or should, but I am hoping that, through all the work that I described earlier on, we are identifying where cases perhaps have not come through the right safeguarding channels or we have not put the right support in place for staff, we learn from that and then we get it right the next time for those individual members of staff.
Kathryn Billing: It has been clear in the current reports that we have seen that have come out from the fire and rescue services that, while there may be misogyny, racism, transphobia, sexism, ableism and racism, all of the protected characteristics noted and discriminated, that that does not transfer into delivery of service to the public. There is no evidence of discrimination. To your point around how it is for a person that has been potentially sexually harassed and then has to join that crew to do their work—
Q145 Dr Cameron: Yes, and their wellbeing and making sure that that is looked after.
Kathryn Billing: That probably just extends to the courage that they have demonstrated throughout their experiences. There is the fact that they have continued to do their role. Like I said, that extends to their courage. As colleagues have said, this is about moving forwards and ensuring that we do not have people in those positions, but indeed, unfortunately, if they are, that they have a route where, first, they can speak out and, secondly, we can wrap the protection that they need around them and support their wellbeing.
Q146 Dr Cameron: What protection would you wrap around them?
Kathryn Billing: It would be different in individual services. If I can speak on behalf of the London Fire Brigade—I sit on its independent panel—that is something that it has dedicated as part of its investigation piece. It has dedicated welfare support, first, in the form of an officer but, secondly, that more specialist support that would be there for them in relation to counselling. That extends into other services as well.
Q147 Dr Cameron: This is a question to each of you. Where have you found the worst pockets of behaviour in your organisation and what role do you feel social media has played in validating misogynistic, sexist and sometimes violent behaviours? Where are you trying to identify it and really root it out?
Kathryn Billing: From my own personal experience, but also from the reports, there is no one particular area. I think that it is fair to say, and it has probably been said before, that each and every one of our services is a representative society. We try to reflect our communities, so it is not going to be any one particular group of people or area of the service where we can say, “It is that group of people for this reason”, because of that reflection of society.
Q148 Dr Cameron: Do you think that it is widespread then?
Kathryn Billing: It is throughout organisations. Do I think social media perpetuates it? I do. I was a keen user of social media a while ago, so I think that it has some real positives, but, again, it is just the trolling. Hopefully, you do not mind me saying, but I have had it. It is never because I am incompetent. It has to be because I am a woman. It is always about what I wear rather than what I do. For me, that is perpetuation of misogyny. I do not mind being called incompetent as a chief fire officer, but can I have it on the same equitable levels as my male colleagues? I apologise for bringing my personal experience into it but I see that across other areas, so yes, I believe that social media perpetuates misogyny and all of the other areas of discrimination in a quite detrimental way.
Q149 Dr Cameron: Catherine, what about the sectors in your organisation? Are there particular pockets of behaviour in particular areas that you have highlighted? Again, does social media perpetuate that?
Catherine Hinwood: I would go back to the excellent work that Surviving in Scrubs has done and the working party on sexual misconduct in surgery. Clearly, they have highlighted areas where there are really alarming reports and rates of sexual abuse and harassment. Also, Nicola Ranger gave evidence to you on the same day and talked about the experience of nurses. We have a lot of data that it cuts across the sector, as it cuts across society.
I would also go back to the expertise of people such as Jo Todd, who gave evidence to you on behalf of Respect, who talked about workplaces or situations where there is a hierarchy, a male-dominated area, a vulnerability, trusted professions and positions of power. You will find that, of course, in any workplace that has those types of characteristics. If you look for those characteristics across the NHS and look at the work that colleagues have done, you will see where it is taking place.
Q150 Dr Cameron: Where there are particular hierarchical structures in place, it is more difficult perhaps to report and, if it is particularly male-dominated, that type of culture, in terms of misogyny, comes back to the fore.
Catherine Hinwood: Yes, certainly. That is the evidence that I know that you have had put before you, which I would absolutely agree with.
Q151 Dr Cameron: What about the social media aspect?
Catherine Hinwood: I do not have any evidence or expertise on that. I would rely on the work that colleagues have done in relation to that.
Q152 Dr Cameron: Is that something that is screened or that there is a policy for, in terms of appropriate social media for staff?
Catherine Hinwood: I would have to come back to you, but I would imagine that most employers and organisations have that kind of policy. We certainly have that kind of thing in NHS England. I do not know whether it is replicated in the same way in every organisation, but there absolutely must be. Again, if you move into something that constitutes sexual harassment under the Equality Act or a criminal act, of course it is covered by our conduct and disciplinary policies as well.
Daren Mochrie: We cannot say that it is in one particular area or another, because when you do that that is when you become perhaps complacent or you do not then identify it in a particular area, whether that is urban versus rural, busy service versus quiet service, or the 999 service versus the NHS 111 service that a lot of the ambulance services run. It is just keeping your eyes open to it. It could take place anywhere and in any part of our business.
In terms of social media, yes, all services will have social media policies. These have to be continually updated as social media and other things evolve, as we all know. Social media does not help, does it? We have heard some of that evidence there just now. I was particularly disturbed by the attack on one of the senior police officers over the weekend that we saw, which was absolutely horrific. It really was, and I was pleased to see Lucy D'Orsi, the chief constable of BTP, and others speak out about that publicly on social media.
I wanted to add another quick couple of things. In the North West Ambulance Service, for example, we now have more females than males, so 55% females versus 45% males. That has changed in the time that I have been in the in the ambulance sector.
Going back to the earlier point around what more we can do, it is incumbent upon all of us to work with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the procurator fiscal or whoever it might be to make sure that, if there are things going on, we get full support from them on how we then tackle it. We have body‑worn cameras now on trial across most of our organisations too. I wanted to throw some of these additional bits of information in in the time that we have available.
Q153 Dr Cameron: There was something else I wanted to ask you as well. In written evidence, you had said that your work in the area had found that sexual harassment can escalate to more serious offences. It is predominantly perpetrated towards colleagues. Would that disproportionately affect female staff and what sort of escalation of offences have you seen?
Daren Mochrie: In the ambulance sector we sit in two camps, do we not? We are very much NHS but we have that emergency service role, command control when it is required and *right markings* [15:08:36], tabards or whatever we have. I think there is still a lot of banter that takes place within mess rooms and ambulance vehicles that probably was not acceptable 30 years ago but happened 30 years ago, but now it is just completely not acceptable. We are doing a lot of work as well with the sector and with organisations about how we stamp out that banter and that it is not acceptable to do or say the things that you might have done 30 years ago when you first joined the organisation. That is all about changing the culture, leadership and behaviour.
Q154 Dr Cameron: Is it that you feel that the banter is part of the context that then perpetuates the escalation?
Daren Mochrie: I do not have any evidence that low-level banter leads on to something much more serious, but we know that, in New York years ago, when minor vandalism and anti-social behaviour and things were not tackled, that that led on to more serious crime being committed. I am sure that it is no different. If people think that they can get away with doing or saying certain things in a mess room or in the back of the ambulance, do they then take an inch or take a mile and think they can get away with more perhaps, with either staff or patients? It is about how you get on top of that and stamp that out.
Q155 Dr Cameron: The banter might be part of this, but are there any other warning signs and what are you doing to intercept that behaviour at an early stage so it does not escalate?
Daren Mochrie: As I keep saying to my executive team, it is about identifying the red flags. Nine times out of 10, a lot of us could probably tell you who of those in the mess room or wherever they are, or the regular patients that we have, are the ones who have those red flags. I would much rather take appropriate action against those individuals and run the risk of going to an employment tribunal than, God forbid, ending up in here and/or in the front pages of the Daily Mail or whatever because it has gone horribly wrong and a patient or a member of the staff has come to real serious harm because we did not identify and do anything about those red flags, because we thought our hands might be tied or we were too concerned about public reputation.
Q156 Dr Cameron: It is acting on red flags.
Daren Mochrie: It is acting on the red flags and taking decisive and appropriate action in line with the policies and procedures, yes.
Q157 Dr Cameron: Catherine, what patterns of escalating behaviour has your service seen in the NHS.
Catherine Hinwood: Chelcie gave some evidence that they had gathered through the Surviving in Scrubs work about some of the escalations that they have had reported to them.
I wanted to pick up on the banter point that Daren had made. That is absolutely critical in terms of stopping behaviours and ensuring that people understand that what could be dismissed as banter can constitute sexual harassment in the definitions in the Equality Act. We have made really sure, for example, that, in our staff survey questions, we set out proper definitions of what can constitute sexual harassment, so that staff really understand that this is what it is and that you may have experienced that but that can constitute sexual harassment. We are doing the same in our policies as well.
Q158 Dr Cameron: Even staff calling it banter minimises it in a way.
Catherine Hinwood: Yes, we would not use the term “banter”. We did not use the term “banter”. We use wording such as “jokes”, “inappropriate” and things like that. You are right. The concept of banter itself is highly problematic. If you can focus on ensuring that some of what is seen as low-level behaviours but are in fact unlawful behaviours and constitute sexual harassment are actioned, that is where you can start to shift cultures and behaviours.
Kathryn Billing: Something that is referenced quite nicely in the ambulance review is around the balance of operational performance with people performance at all levels. If I link that into the National Fire Chiefs Council work that we are doing, it comes back to the laying down of expectations, so through zero-tolerance statements that the NFCC has published and setting that out at a high level. Like you said, the term “banter” minimises the derogatory language and behaviour that is used under that term.
Then it is for me around, as I spoke about earlier on, the training and development to ensure that managers are able to address it. Do you know what? It is also around each and every one of us as individuals, because you do not have to be a manager to understand what is right and wrong, and you certainly do not have to be a manager to challenge inappropriate behaviour. That then links into the toolkit that we are producing.
Something that we have all talked about consistently is around data. One thing we are doing at the National Fire Chiefs Council is that we are going to be working with the Local Government Association and the Home Office. We collect a lot of data but we want to make sure that we are consistent in that data collection and able to, as we said, not only at a local level but a national level, start to identify those flags.
We are talking about culture, values and behaviours right here, right now, but I know that, when I leave the service, I want it to be talked about more positively. I want it to continue to be addressed. I want it to continue to be looked at. I do not want this to fall off the radar in 10 years’ time. This needs to be equally as important as our operational performance. Through the metrics and the monitoring, we can certainly drive to ensure that it is seen and maintained in that appropriate light.
Q159 Chair: Daren, can I take you back to your red flags and your willingness, as a chief exec of an ambulance service, to take disciplinary action against individuals who you think have shown behaviour that crosses a line, that provokes that red flag and where you have taken the risk of going to tribunal? Do you keep any stats on how many of those cases you are successful in?
Daren Mochrie: No. We probably do behind the scenes, but I would need to gather it, to be honest. Thinking of my own personal experience at NWAS, North West Ambulance Service, I would need to probably go away and get that information for you, to be honest. We will have information, I think, that breaks down the disciplinary case mix, but I am not entirely sure whether we have information on what happens at tribunal level and whether it is overturned, or indeed whether there is a prosecution of a member of staff and/or a member of the public or a patient.
Catherine Hinwood: Data collection in this space is quite inconsistent and needs a lot of work. That is something that we would recognise between the three of us.
Daren Mochrie: I can ask the question for you.
Q160 Chair: You would recognise it, but are you actually doing anything about it?
Catherine Hinwood: We have undertaken a review of what data is collected on a national and local basis in relation to sexual misconduct and domestic abuse, in terms of both patients and staff. We are working through what it is that we could do to improve that. It is large-scale infrastructure improvements.
I was also really struck by Jo’s evidence about the lack of data around perpetrators on a national scale. It has made me think about how, nationally, we do not have a picture of these kinds of things. Some of the cross-system pictures that we could get if we had something that was worked on together could be incredibly rich and helpful.
Q161 Chair: That is certainly something that we heard from those working in the domestic abuse sector: that cross-system data is what is required. Daren, I have a second question for you around culture. You have been very clear that in your ambulance service you have had a zero-tolerance approach. You have been prepared to dismiss what I would refer to as the banter defence as the nonsense that it is. Does every chief executive of every ambulance service in the country share that view?
Daren Mochrie: I would say that they do now, if I am being honest. We have done enough work now across the sector with not just the chief executives but the chairs and the various different boards of each of the ambulance services. I think that they do. I could not comment on whether that then plays out day in, day out across their organisations.
I can give you assurance that, as the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, we are not going to say, “That is it done now”, and move on to the next thing. We are going to continue to invest in this role that we have. We are going to continue to make sure. Over the next 12 months we have a few development sessions for chief execs and chairs. We will have Bron back, giving information about what we have spoken about today and some of the data that we have described too, to make sure that everybody gets it and understands that it is everybody’s business.
Q162 Carolyn Harris: I have been listening to you all talking and I was thinking that this is not a new problem. This is something that has always been around. There will still be people working in every single organisation who will be hearing today’s session and thinking, “Stuff and nonsense. Why are we worrying about that? There is no harm in it. We did not mean it”.
I worry about what roles those people who are still in the organisation are in. Instead of sharing best practice, it is inheriting bad behaviour, is it not? We have got from one to another. We have learnt the skills of how to be abusive, how to be misogynistic and how to sexualise women in the workplace, et cetera. How many of the cases that you are all aware of have been perpetrated by a senior member of staff and it is the victim whose career has ended and not the perpetrator?
Kathryn Billing: In relation to national positions, I would not be able to directly respond to that. Within my own service, the most recent accounts that have come out are more along the lines of banter, as it is called, that has escalated to that inappropriate level. That is where your closer-knit teams that have been working have maybe joined in and been part of it as it has escalated to the level of what we would absolutely deem to be unacceptable.
Catherine Hinwood: Again, I am going to return to the work of Surviving in Scrubs and the evidence that you heard from them and from Tamzin from the working party on sexual misconduct in surgery. In their work, they have certainly heard powerful stories of people who felt and reported that that had been the case. What you have described is why this culture change work is so absolutely critical. Getting into every organisation, integrated care board and trust, with a senior lead talking about the importance of domestic abuse and sexual violence work and the sexual safety charter, is absolutely critical to being able to change the conversations that are being had at a senior level.
Daren Mochrie: I do not have information around the seniority of any of the cases or anything like that. We could try to get that for the Committee.
Just on the point around resistance, that was the word that you used, was it not? When I met last week with Bron, our lead, and asked her about some key messages that she would like me to get across to the Committee today, resistance was one of the things that she is still worried about, in that not everybody necessarily gets it and perhaps still thinks that it is acceptable to say or do whatever they have done for the last 30 years.
She thinks that that is a barrier to some of the cultural change within the sector, so she has produced some resistance guidance for managers and staff about what it means and how you overcome some of those resistance challenges. That is a good point, because that was raised by Bron earlier on.
Q163 Carolyn Harris: If I can come back to you, Kathryn, you will have seen the investigation that Paul Brand did for ITV. At two fire services in Wales, which I am extremely embarrassed by, what I just talked about was through them completely. It is not a minor problem. It is a major problem, and it is probably worse in the fire service than anywhere else, from the research that I have done. How would you combat that?
Kathryn Billing: One thing that we are probably all talking about here is that it is absolutely systemic. We are battling against an institution. I regularly have conversations with colleagues in the police as well. I have been in the service for 25 years and, in fairness, things have moved on. The conversations and the banter have significantly changed, but we are seeing cases where it certainly has not moved. This is about absolutely going down to the real basics, because we have built an institution on probably white, heterosexual, male-dominated systems, processes, uniform and equipment. Every single thing is built around that one particular viewpoint, and we need to break pretty much all of that down.
Some of the work that the NFCC is now doing is around looking at our policies and processes and having broader conversations about how we start to bring the victim’s voice into the development of recruitment, policies and leadership programmes. Until we can start to view things from victims’ but also other people’s perspectives, we will probably continue. The thing is that, if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got, so how can we now bring in different viewpoints? That comes back to the fact that we want a more diverse workforce, but we need to make sure that we are bringing them into an organisation where they will absolutely be valued and their voices heard.
Q164 Carolyn Harris: You are not going to get a more diverse workforce when you are asking people to join a service that now has a history of bad behaviour towards women. You mentioned something earlier about new people coming in and reporting bad behaviour that they see. How confident and comfortable are new starters or relatively new officers in reporting bad behaviour to potentially resistant line managers? Are they fearful that their careers are going to be on the line?
Kathryn Billing: That is why the independent reporting is so important. What each and every one of us have said is that we are not going to sit here and provide you with the assurance that every single fire and rescue service has a culture where people feel confident to report and confident that that reporting will be investigated in the right way. That is why, right here, right now, the independent reporting, especially for fire services, is important. Like I said, this is not just about doing one thing that fixes everything. It has to be done while we are fixing the cultural problem and the investigation problem. Over here, we need to ensure that people have those independent lines of reporting, so that they can have that confidence that their voices will be heard and action taken.
Q165 Carolyn Harris: Presumably, you are working with the FBU as well.
Kathryn Billing: Yes.
Q166 Carolyn Harris: I know that it is a different dynamic in hospitals, but, characteristically, most consultants are male and most nurses female. What is the dynamic there? How often is it a senior doctor who is seen to be causing grief to a young nurse who is relatively new and inexperienced and does not want to rock the boat?
Catherine Hinwood: I do not have that data. I will share the work that colleagues have done in this space. One of the things that we will have for the first time, in March, is data from the national education and training survey that talks about learners’ experience of sexual harassment. That will be really rich, helpful data in understanding the issues a lot better.
Q167 Carolyn Harris: Daren, do you have more women because they see that you are doing more?
Daren Mochrie: We had that conversation recently around how we now have about a 55-45 split in North West Ambulance Service. We are also seeing, in addition to more women now in the ambulance service and the sector, a younger workforce. A high proportion of staff within the workplace are under 25 and female.
Is that a good thing? Are we able to attract that workforce because we are getting better at this and at different policies and procedures around flexible workings and things like that? I do not know, but I would not be sitting here, being complacent and leaving you with the impression that we do not think that there is still a challenge within the sector. We need to keep at it and keep on it. It is even more important now that, if we have more women and younger people within our organisations, we keep up with the times and make sure that we are a good and attractive employer for the future.
Q168 Carolyn Harris: Do you feel that your respective organisations have, at any time, put the reputation of the service ahead of the interests of the victims?
Daren Mochrie: Over the years, that probably will have happened. I am sure that, if you looked at all the research and evidence, there would be examples where leaders, boards or authorities have put their reputation first before victims’, whether that is staff or members of the public.
Kathryn Billing: I have seen that shift and that change. Apologies again, but, speaking on my own behalf, you are absolutely right. It has probably happened previously, but, right here, right now, we have seen that change in commitment to do what is right.
To be quite honest, I know that, when we terminated the employment of firefighters in Cornwall, it damaged my reputation and that of the organisation, until one of our local press companies released some of the information. I was called “woke” and “weak”, but did I care? Absolutely not, because I could look at myself in the mirror when I went home and go, “I have done the right thing”. What you have now is a swathe of managers and leaders of our organisations who are going, “No, enough is enough”.
Q169 Carolyn Harris: Is it the case that this change has all happened because it has been found out, not because it needed to happen anyway? Suddenly, TV programmes and documentaries, and stories that will appear in the papers, are saying that this is really bad behaviour. Things are now being talked about. Look at the dreadful situation with the Met Police. Are we seeing a sea change? It is a bit like not being sorry for the crime but for being caught, if you understand what I am trying to say.
Kathryn Billing: The answer to that from my perspective is no, but what I would definitely say is please keep the scrutiny going, as you have done. From my perspective, this is shining the light on something that we have wanted the light to be shone on for years.
Q170 Carolyn Harris: What stopped the light from shining? What was stopping other people from within the service speaking out? Why wait until it is on the front page of the Daily Mail? Surely, somebody should have been speaking up before now.
Kathryn Billing: Action has been taken before, but you have not heard about it because it has not been in the news. It is not until you have had those national reports that you have gone, “Gosh, what is this all about?” If you go back to 2019-20, three or four years before these reports, firefighters were being terminated because of their conduct and behaviour.
Catherine Hinwood: It is also a societal shift, where some of these conversations just were not being had within society as a whole or within the infrastructures. Our chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, appointed me and set this programme up. She is personally really committed to this agenda. I came in without a permanent programme. The programme has been made permanent. We have appointed a national clinical director. Of course, scrutiny drives action to an extent, but the commitment is absolutely real from me and so many other leaders.
Daren Mochrie: Without repeating what has already been said, we have dealt with these things over the years. We now hear more about it, whether through social media or mainstream media, or whatever the case may be. We know that there is a societal issue out there. I am sure that there will be another Committee looking at things like pornography with children and things like that, which are probably contributing to how some people think, and so on and so forth.
For us, it is about how we keep on that front foot. The ambulance sector has had its challenges, as we know, but we have tried to get much more on the front foot. We have not done it just because we felt that we needed to. We just thought, “It is the right thing to do. It is unacceptable behaviour. Let us get on the front foot and work with colleagues in NHS England or elsewhere”.
Q171 Carolyn Harris: I still think that being on the front foot would have been going public with it and not waiting for the media to catch you out and then you having to go public with it. Can I just ask all of you one last question? Are you aware of any NDAs that your organisation may have with victims?
Daren Mochrie: To be honest, no. In the 35 years that I have been with the NHS ambulance service, I am not aware of any. NHS England really tightened up NDAs and compromise agreements, which is what they were called beforehand. It is now something that is not the done thing. There might be older ones out there, but I am not aware of them, certainly in recent times.
Catherine Hinwood: It is against Acas guidance. It is against NHS Employers guidance. It is against Cabinet Office guidance since 2019, so NHS organisations should absolutely not, and I am not aware of any NDAs.
Kathryn Billing: In relation to non-disclosure agreements, the NFCC does not view them across fire and rescue services. It would be down to individual fire and rescue services and their positions as to whether they are advised to use them.
Q172 Carolyn Harris: Can we find that out? Is there any way that we can get that information?
Kathryn Billing: I can see if we can find that out.
Q173 Chair: Daren, can I just go back to you with a specific question following the Sky News report two or three weeks ago? It said that the ambulance service suffers from a toxic culture, with “students or female student council members…experiencing misogyny and sexual harassment—if not on a daily basis then on a weekly basis”. You have given us a really positive picture this evening of the changes that have been made. What is being done to tackle that and the article from Tracy Nicholls, chief executive of the College of Paramedics, acknowledging that problems still exist?
Daren Mochrie: What has changed over the years is that all ambulance services used to do their own in-house training for all their students coming in, whether that was an emergency medical technician, call handler and dispatch or paramedicine. Paramedicine is now a three-year degree programme, so we are now having to work with the multitude of higher education institutes out there, which are authorised to run the degree programmes for paramedic training. As a sector, we are working closely with our HEIs to make sure that they are talking, living and breathing all of the stuff that we have spoken about today. We are also working with the College of Paramedics, which has some overview of the course curriculum that the universities have to teach.
Where it then becomes an ambulance service responsibility to some extent is that those students then come on placement to not only different ambulance services but other NHS organisations across the UK. We do have that in our sights and need to do much more to make that experience for students better going forward. As I have already said, the vast majority of students coming into our organisations are now female, which is a good thing. We have that in our sights. We are working with Tracy at the College of Paramedics. We are working with our HEIs, NHS England and others to make sure that that experience for students is better going forward.
Q174 Chair: Is it fair to say that your female staff arriving with you are already victims?
Daren Mochrie: They may have had lived experience in previous occupations or growing up.
Q175 Chair: Is the education system that they are going through not protecting your female staff before they arrive with the ambulance service?
Daren Mochrie: That is a good question. I do not even know what percentage or number of students who come into the ambulance sector on placement have either had a previous occupation and are of a certain age or are literally straight out of school and have gone straight on to a degree programme. Those will have different experiences of life.
Q176 Chair: Kathryn, you used the word, and I am going to go there—“woke”. How much of a problem is it that the banter defence often accompanies, “The problem is that the service”—whether it be the fire service, the ambulance service or the NHS in general—“has just gone woke”?
Kathryn Billing: That is probably a reflection of society. Looking at you all around the table, it is quite often levelled at Governments as well. It is a societal issue. For me and for the National Fire Chiefs Council, we will be absolutely steadfast in our zero-tolerance approach to what is appropriate and what is not. As we have said, this is also about future proofing. The level of societal tolerance will probably change over time, but we need to be enforcing the highest standards as a public service and will continue to do that. We have the trust and respect of the public. For me as a chief fire officer and for others in the National Fire Chiefs Council, we have to maintain that. It is absolutely our duty to do so. I may be woke, and we may be woke, but there are great people before us who would also be classed as woke, so long may it continue.
Q177 Chair: Catherine, what role do EDI officers within the NHS have in tackling the culture of misogyny?
Catherine Hinwood: They have a really important role. The sexual safety charter is embedded in the EDI plan. We have linked the work that EDI colleagues and the EDI plan are doing with our work on tackling sexual harassment, as well as the sexual safety charter implementation. A load of issues, including to do with the gender pay gap, are set out in our EDI plan and have relevance here. They have a key role and will be reporting back in terms of the sexual safety charter implementation as well.
Q178 Kim Johnson: I have a couple of questions on improving behaviours. My first question is to Daren. The CQC did reports in 2017 and 2022 looking at sexualised behaviour. They have said that there has been no improvement in those intervening five years, so I just wanted to know whether you could provide any reasons for why there has been no change.
Daren Mochrie: Are you talking about ambulance-specific CQC reports or about wider CQC reports?
Q179 Kim Johnson: I am talking about the reports on overt and covert sexualised behaviour.
Daren Mochrie: That sounds like it could be an NHS-wide triangulation of CQC reports. Certainly from an ambulance sector point of view, we have already heard evidence that suggests that the CQC does look at this. They may triangulate staff survey results or speak to staff. One thing that we have not touched upon today is that all ambulance services have now committed, through AACE, to investing in staff networks. For example, we have a women’s network, a diversity network and a disability network, and so on and so forth. We use those networks to try to improve what we have been speaking about today.
In terms of the specifics about why it has not improved, I would need to go back and look at what that report was and also at historical staff survey results. In some areas, we are improving. In others, we still have a long way to go, certainly from an ambulance sector point of view, because we do lag behind the rest of the NHS, if I am being honest, when it comes to the staff survey results. I am sorry that I cannot comment specifically on that report.
Q180 Kim Johnson: Can I just go back to a question that was raised earlier about escalations? I just wanted to know whether your organisation collected data on any non-sexual contact offences such as upskirting, cyber flashing and those kinds of things that are relatively new? Do you have specific policies to deal with those kinds of things within your organisation?
Daren Mochrie: We will capture that data when we know about it. If it is captured anonymously through routes such as our Freedom to Speak Up guardian, we will be able to look at that. It may be that it comes through and is captured through things such as our HR case management. I and our executive leadership committee can see all the HR case management stuff that is ongoing across the organisation, and we will capture information that you described there just now in terms of trying to break it down into what the description is and what type of offence or behaviour it is.
Q181 Kim Johnson: Can you explain what services will have to do in terms of the reducing misogyny and improving sexual safety strategy? How will it be monitored and what specific action will be taken against any staff member who is found to breach the code of conduct?
Daren Mochrie: We have already heard that the NFCC is very similar to AACE, in that we are not a regulator of ambulance services. It is up to individual ambulance chief executives, who are the accountable officers, with the chairman and the board, to enforce and take appropriate action. Through AACE, we have produced that guidance document and asked chief executives of ambulance services to adopt it and to do what they can in terms of taking forward the various aspects and the best practice guidance contained within it.
NHS England, the CQC and others have the ability, through their regulatory powers, as Catherine said earlier, to then hold individual ambulance services to account and to say, “AACE has produced this document and best practice guidance. Tell us how you are enforcing or implementing it and what you are doing about it going forward”.
Q182 Kim Johnson: You all mentioned that you are at a starting point but that there is still an awful lot to do to change the service. Daren, I wanted to know whether you could provide any examples where effective culture change has taken place anywhere.
Daren Mochrie: If I use North West Ambulance Service as an example, which is my organisation, I know that, looking at our staff survey results year on year, we have been improving. There is still a long way to go on certain aspects of our staff survey results, but I do see a gradual improvement. It is embargoed, so I cannot say what it is this year, but there are green shoots in terms of some of the metrics within the staff survey report. As Kathryn said earlier, it is embargoed until the end of March, so I cannot go into any more detail than that.
Q183 Kim Johnson: You are a former paramedic. The incidence of sexualised behaviour within the service is higher than others. They quote something like 84 out of 293 cases. Could you explain why you thought that that was the case within that specific service? Has that anything to do with the power imbalance or younger paramedics coming in and fearing reporting in case there are any reprisals? Have you seen any of that during the 30-odd years that you have been in the service?
Daren Mochrie: When I think back to being 16 years of age, working in operating theatres in NHS Lothian, and then 19, when I joined the ambulance sector, I saw it myself as a male. I know that we are here talking about women’s challenges and unacceptable behaviours towards them, but I could see it when I worked with female crewmates and other colleagues as well. Some of the unwarranted or unacceptable behaviour by patients or by other members of staff back then was unacceptable.
As Kathryn says, I have seen a massive shift. Stuff that may have happened 35 years ago in an operating theatre, or 33 years ago in an ambulance mess room or whatever, is gradually getting better and changing for the better, but I cannot, hand on heart, say that we have completely eradicated every unacceptable conversation that may take place, whether that is the public on staff or staff on staff.
I do see a big shift, and the fact that we are having these conversations now and doing the work that we are doing—and we do share the work that we are doing across the national police and fire chiefs councils, not just on this but on mental health, health and wellbeing and other things that we are all involved in—can only be a positive thing.
Q184 Kim Johnson: Catherine, can you say what a zero-tolerance approach to sexual assault and harassment in the NHS means in practice? Will someone be sacked for a misogynistic joke? What sanctions would be taken?
Catherine Hinwood: I know that there has been quite a bit of discussion around the use of the term “zero tolerance” and what it means. What it means is that, if someone has sexually harassed or sexually assaulted someone, there will be zero tolerance of that particular behaviour. I know that there was a concern that it means that all instances of sexual harassment would result in gross misconduct or something along those lines. It is about trying to lay the stall of, “This is something that cannot be tolerated in the organisation. We have clear policies that set out what constitutes sexual harassment, what behaviours are acceptable, and what are not. If your behaviour falls within that bucket, action will be taken”.
Q185 Kim Johnson: The Chair asked a question about whether that would apply to all grades.
Catherine Hinwood: Yes, absolutely.
Q186 Kim Johnson: The NFCC published its culture action plan in July 2023 and committed to providing regular updates on progress. What tangible steps are you asking the fire and rescue service to undertake?
Kathryn Billing: There are some key things around those. There are 22, but I will go into just some of them. One is the implementation of the fire standards. The core code of ethics is certainly one of the areas that all services are signed up to. As you said, the NFCC cannot mandate, but there is certainly that commitment.
There is the implementation of the fire standards around safeguarding as well as the leadership fire standards. We have also seen that lots of services have taken on board the National Fire Chiefs Council culture statement and the zero-tolerance piece, which we have talked about.
Another is the introduction of independent reporting lines, which I gave information about earlier. There are professional leadership development courses at each level, with a supervisory, middle and executive leadership programme, which has been going on for quite a long time now.
We have a culture dashboard, which I spoke about, to get that consistency of collection of data. There is the challenging behaviour toolkit. There are listen and learn sessions. We talked about how we can begin to get people in a room to understand societal change and difference in perceptions. At the lunch and learn sessions that we run, we get in excess of 200 people from across the fire sector attending. That is on Teams, not in person. Sorry, Chair, I saw your face.
Chair: I thought you were doing lunch for 200.
Kathryn Billing: You bring your own lunch. It is an opportunity to talk about different issues. We have White Ribbon. We have also had people who identify as LGBT. We have had people who have lived experience around what it is like to be a black person in the fire service. Those are topics that, to be quite honest, 10 years ago, would normally not be discussed or even talked about.
We had the menopause conference last year, bringing together about 150 women to begin to progress menopause policies and different ways of working to help provide support as we approach that time of our lives. We also had a culture conference last year for the first time, and we have the next one scheduled in July. That is just a quick example snapshot.
Q187 Kim Johnson: Are people who are found to be guilty of sexual harassment cases and are eligible for their pensions able to take their pensions if they are sacked, or do they lose everything?
Catherine Hinwood: I do not know the answer to that question.
Q188 Kim Johnson: It has been cited in the media recently.
Daren Mochrie: I would imagine that that is a Department of Health and Social Care and Treasury conversation.
Catherine Hinwood: I would need to come back to you on that.
Kathryn Billing: That would be down to individual fire and rescue services. It is not something that the NFCC would be able to comment on.
Kim Johnson: I would say that, if they are found guilty, they should not really be accessing their pensions.
Chair: Can I thank all of the witnesses for your evidence this afternoon? There are a couple of points for all of you to pick up on. We would appreciate receiving that in writing.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Assistant Chief Constable Samantha Millar and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy.
Q189 Chair: Good afternoon and thank you to our second panel for attending this afternoon’s session in our inquiry about escalating violence against women and girls. Can I welcome Assistant Chief Constable Samantha Millar, strategic programme director for VAWG for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy, the professionalism lead for the Metropolitan Police Service? Thank you for coming along this afternoon. Are you content that we use your first names, as we did with the previous panel?
Samantha Millar: Yes.
Stuart Cundy: Yes.
Q190 Chair: Thank you very much. You will have heard the evidence that we have already had from the previous session. Can I just start with some questions about the attitudes that still exist towards women within policing? Specifically, we all know about the November 2022 inspectorate report that concluded that there was a culture of misogyny, sexism and predatory behaviour towards female members of staff persisting in the police force. Do you even know what proportion of female officers and staff across the UK have been sexually assaulted or harassed by a colleague at work?
Samantha Millar: It is an absolutely appropriate question to start with in terms of the scale and nature of the workforce. I would say that all of those female colleagues—and I have a view—recognise the sorts of day-to-day sexism and misogyny that is being called out. That is a really tough place to be when you are in something as difficult and demanding as policing, and that is not something that we can back away from.
The fact, though, that we are having the conversation, that it is live and that it is energised in policing, and that female colleagues are talking about it, is a movement in our culture. It has been good to hear the fire and ambulance services in the panel before us talk about that shift in the culture, because we are not starting again. We are just moving the culture, and the culture has to move on.
Look at the messages coming out of Louise Casey’s review. I have more than 30 years of service and I recognise all of those behaviours. I am a senior police officer. I have sat on misconduct panels, week in, week out, and we have got rid of people who we do not want in policing, but it cannot stop there. We do not want those people in policing, but we have to move on. That is where this systemic, cultural and methodological change has to happen.
It does not surprise me that the starting question is, “Do we know the scale and nature of the threat?” I know the scale and nature of the threat, because I am a female working in policing and I work alongside my colleagues, day in, day out. That is why a lot of the efforts that we have been going to for the last few years are based on that HMIC report that really said that policing has to do something different. It has to come at this with a real surge of activity and a seriousness, and it has to make a difference.
Q191 Chair: Is the surge of activity empowering, encouraging and enabling women to report?
Samantha Millar: It absolutely is.
Q192 Chair: What is the scale of the difference?
Samantha Millar: We are doing a few things to try to quantify that. We set off a lot on the back of that report, which was absolutely right about policing having to take the recommendations, which have been made year in, year out, seriously. We have to take them forward. We have to tackle some of these really difficult issues. The surge of activity set off at the beginning a requirement that we understand the scale and nature.
As you will be aware, Chair—I know that we have talked about it—we had to set out the scale and nature of what was happening inside policing before we looked at anything else. We did that very quickly, six months after the surge of activity, and we got the scale and nature of it, but it was a really difficult process to go through. We had many issues within the systems that we operate, which made it a challenge to really come back with a valid picture.
Our commitment was to try again. We are on our second year of doing that. In May this year, we will be reporting again about what that insider threat picture looks like and what the scale and nature is of what we think is happening inside policing. That is absolutely the commitment that we have made. We recognise that that has to be something that is done annually. We have to be constantly looking within policing and trying to answer that question. If we do not understand the scale and nature, we are not going to know where to start, where to put our efforts and where to prioritise. That is critically important.
Q193 Chair: We heard specifically from the NHS about the challenges of collecting data across a myriad different systems. Is that the same for policing, and why?
Samantha Millar: We are probably both going to have very clear thoughts about this. It is a real problem. We have multiple systems that have legacies that often do not operate across each other. The join-up is really difficult in terms of co-ordinating the 43 forces and the systems that they choose. As one example, we do not record crime in a unified, systematic way across all of policing. Police forces have the opportunity to choose the systems that they often put in place, which sometimes do not talk across each other when we are trying to work across systems within a force that sometimes are not compatible and, on a national level, trying to gather that capability.
When we went about trying to understand the scale and nature of the threats, we were, at points, asking people to review spreadsheets. That cannot be how we go forward in policing. There are some systemic problems with being able to hold ourselves to account for what is happening across policing.
When we went through that process, it was the first time that we had ever asked for that national data to be collected, so we came across the sorts of problems that you do when you go through that process for the first time. Our systems and our data collection capability are really challenging.
Q194 Chair: I do not want to interpret this wrongly, but did you just tell me that, even within single forces, there were different methods of collecting data?
Samantha Millar: Within forces, there is a force capability. Big forces are often broken down into different boroughs and districts. Systemically, that can sometimes not be compatible as well.
Q195 Chair: Why has systematic misogyny and sexism been tolerated for so long? Is it the gender balance of policing? Is it—and apologies—just cultural? Is this something that is going to take a long time to dig out, because it is so ingrained?
Samantha Millar: There are so many lenses to look through when answering that question. Policing is hugely historic. We have policed for hundreds of years. We have built our systems upon systems upon systems. We have come at it from a lens that probably has not been representative of society as we have moved forward. We are a public service, so the demands on public service mean that we have to make decisions about where we put our resource, what we can afford and where we spend our monies.
The challenge is always how to buy in, bring in and implement the most effective capability that we have, which is sometimes not always available to us. Trying to revolutionise and reform systems that are absolutely embedded is really complex, and we cannot do that. It takes a long time to bring systemic change.
It is because it has been built on a platform in a way that is probably quite linear as opposed to the complexity that society demands of policing now. I know that we are going to go on to this, but it is really difficult to keep up with social media and understand how we manage and use it as a tool for the good. It has some fantastic opportunities and does us a great service at times, but how do we get ahead of people misbehaving on it? How do we monitor it? We are becoming more and more of an encrypted capability. How on earth are we going to investigate, track and monitor our staff and know if anybody is misbehaving on it, if we cannot access it? It is very difficult for the public sector to get ahead of where changing technology in particular is going.
Q196 Chair: I get quite angry at this public sector argument, because I want our public services to be better. I want to look at our police, fire, ambulance and armed services, and our schools, and say that they are better than the CBI or Odey Asset Management, but I do not feel that they are. I would stick Parliament in there as well. I want us to be the gold standard. Is it not just a bit lazy to say, “It is a public service and our priorities are elsewhere” if we can point to examples of misogyny, sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape being perpetrated by police officers?
Samantha Millar: I have been both military and police, and I am immensely proud of both, because I come at it from a value set that I protect, care for and safeguard society. I think that I am better than the CBI and all the others that you named there, so I am going to defend the public sector. We are brilliant, but we often do it without the capability and the resource that we need. I do not think that we are lazy. It is hugely complex. I have worked in policing for 30 years and it is immensely difficult to systemically change the operating environment.
That is not to say that you should not be challenged. I have spent my service challenging inappropriate behaviour, poor standards and sexism, day in, day out. I came in as a young graduate. I had a label on me from the beginning. You have to care about what you do to keep that going. I think that the public sector is utterly brilliant and I would not want to change it, but I would defend it in that we often lack the resource to have the best kit and the best capability and to be ahead of some of these really difficult problems.
Q197 Chair: You just summed it up then. You came in as a young graduate and you stayed with a label on your back as a woman in the police service. Has it been easier for you to call out poor behaviour when you have seen it as a woman than it has been for some male colleagues, or is it just because you are senior now?
Samantha Millar: I do not think that it has ever been easy. As I have progressed in policing, I have felt more weight on my shoulders to influence and to bring along with me those people who I work with. I would never use the word “easy”. You have to be hugely courageous in policing. I turn up every day to do the best job that I can. There is nothing easy about that in policing. There is nothing easy about meeting the needs of the people who need policing. The vast majority of colleagues who I have ever worked with are brilliant, competent and caring staff. That is why I am 30 years plus and still in policing. I love it.
That is not to say that it does not have its problems, because it does, but some of them are systemic and we have to challenge that. I will give you one really small example. I do my fitness test every year. I love doing it with an all-female group now, because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel that I am okay and still passing it. I do not want to do it with young recruits anymore, because they are fast and I cannot keep up, but some forces still do not have that as an option.
We are pushing, “Why should you not meet the needs of your workforce?” We are getting an older workforce who are staying longer, which is great, because we bring experience, but we absolutely should be changing and meeting the needs of the people working inside it. That is just one really small example, but a really important one.
Q198 Chair: Stuart, does the Met have a bigger problem than all of the other police forces?
Stuart Cundy: Good afternoon. We do have a bigger problem, simply in terms of scale, because we are the largest police service within the UK. In terms of proportion, I am happy to share with you this afternoon some of the data. We have let women and girls down. I would echo what Sam was saying at the start. I have been in service about the same length of time as Sam. I have seen lots of changes.
Is the scale larger than other forces as a proportion? The light has certainly been shone more brightly on us than most other police forces, and rightly so. The work that we are doing now is uncovering more and more, which means difficult cases. We had another one today of a former officer who has been convicted of very serious offences. We will keep doing that, because it is an absolute journey to try to get to. It is never going to be an end goal but about trying to incrementally make that difference to deal with some of those systemic issues such as Sam has referred to.
One of the questions that you posed was whether it gets easier to call things out. It undoubtedly get easier the more you go on in any service, in any profession or in any walk of life, but the thing that will make the difference and that we are endeavouring to do in the Met is to create the right environment that helps people call it out, no matter who they are, no matter what their length of service, and no matter where they are operating or working. It is tough to create that environment. I have always been one for needing to do quite symbolic actions and differences. It will not be perfect every single time, but you have to keep at it in a very relentless way.
Q199 Chair: Does the light shining more brightly on the Met give you an opportunity?
Stuart Cundy: I would absolutely agree with you on that. Some may see things as a threat, and it is difficult. The overwhelming majority of our colleagues—and, Sam, you were saying it yourself—turn up to work, whether they are police officers, police staff or volunteers, to do the best possible job that they can. The officers and staff—it is primarily officers—who corrupt their integrity are those who we need to get out of the police service.
It goes back to being relentless, and that is where we need to be relentless about following those who are the perpetrators and preventing it in the first place, as well as, where things do occur, helping people to come forward. We were the first service that introduced an anonymous national reporting line for conduct and complaints through Crimestoppers. It has now been adopted nationally. Our internal reporting has gone up threefold, more or less since Sir Mark came in as commissioner.
I see that as the opportunity, because of the very difficult situation that the Met has been in. We need to grasp that opportunity to help people internally wrestle with some of these deeper things. You mentioned culture, and there are always cultures in cultures, as we well understand.
Q200 Chair: The Casey report identified that there were certain roles and commands within the Met where there might be a particular problem. Is that accurate? What is being done to tackle it?
Stuart Cundy: The short answer is “yes”. As I mentioned, there are cultures within cultures. Louise Casey called out in particular our specialist firearms commands. There are very high-profile cases that we are all aware of connected to those commands. We have been doing much more in those places than some others, as well as across the whole of the organisation. The parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, which is one of those that was called out, has a whole new senior leadership team. That is not the answer on its own, but you need to make some symbolic changes.
Louise Casey called out many issues about that command, including supporting those there who were turning up to do the best possible jobs that they could do, but were not well supported, well equipped or well led by us as the organisation.
Q201 Chair: Can I just ask a question on symbolic change? We can all understand that there will be instances where that is important. How much does that then facilitate cultural change beneath?
Stuart Cundy: “How much?” is potentially a difficult question to answer. It is definitely a significant factor. I am a public servant, but my view is that we often build things based on stories. In policing, we do like the stories of events, incidents, responses, supporting victims and caring for communities. The symbolic thing is one of those stories on which you can hang other underlying, systematic cultural changes.
Following Louise Casey’s review and her recommendations, we are introducing a new culture, diversity and inclusion directorate, which has a significant enabling factor for us around tackling misogyny and police conduct. We have a very regulated conduct framework that we operate in within policing, which may have advantages compared to some other professions.
Cultural change is not done simply through legislation or regulation. It takes senior leaders. It takes leaders. I remember, as a young recruit police officer, being told, “You are a leader”, because, when you go out as a police officer, it is not when you get to sergeant, inspector or a senior rank. All police officers—and, indeed, staff in policing—are leaders in their own right. Everybody has that individual responsibility and that collective responsibility, which are the things that we have been discussing.
Q202 Chair: Are the Casey review recommendations being put in place quickly enough?
Stuart Cundy: Do we want to do them more quickly and more deeply? Yes, absolutely. There is a tension of balance, as Sam has talked about, in terms of how we can prioritise all of the things that we wish to do. Sir Mark has said that he did not want to be a commissioner who would be talking about more trust, less crime and high standards. He did not want to be the high standards one. That should go without saying, but that has certainly been where we have put an incredible amount of focus within the Met Police, because it is one of those enabling foundations for us to deliver much greater trust and less crime for Londoners.
Samantha Millar: Stuart absolutely has a focus on the Met. I have listened to Louise Casey, as all of us probably have, and her description of what she found many times. It is so powerful and such an opportunity. Louise Casey should say to Stuart and I, “What is the difference? What have you done?” We absolutely have to be held accountable to that. There is something here about where you start. We talk about this big, traditional system that is really on a move and operates in a certain hierarchical way that is very set in practice and procedure and the way it operates.
First of all, you have to look in and understand your workforce in terms of the mix, the health and wellbeing, and everything that you have talked to as a Committee today. One of the things that we have never done in my service is to look at every single police officer and member of police staff and understand whether there is any risk sat in there that we are not aware of. That is an enormous task, but we did it. I am not aware that it was not done properly, lawfully, carefully or systematically. It brought out a number of people who we needed to go back to, and we will go back to all of those people and understand what the options are. Some of them are criminal investigations; some of them are misconduct. Largely, it came out that the majority of police officers and police staff are fit to be in policing.
You then build on that. Is that because we are not listening? Is there the culture and the opportunity for our officers to talk about what it is like being in policing? Stuart was talking about Sigma, which has been a fantastic activity in the Met to bring about the opportunity for the workforce to talk to policing about what they are seeing and feeling inside policing. We have to carry that on.
We have just refreshed the code of ethics to help our young leaders and early supervisors really understand how to call out systematic problems and early indicators of poor behaviour. Like our ambulance colleague said, we could all point at the ones who we think are the bad apples, so let us call it out for that and give people the skills to be able to do it.
There are a number of things. The College of Policing has worked really at pace over the last couple of years to give a training capability to all of our frontline supervisors around how to address abuse and harassment behaviours in the workplaces. There are so many activities ongoing that I would want to describe to Louise Casey. It is, by no means, going to sort everything, but policing has to show a commitment that it wants to unpick and unpeel the systems and practices that are in place, because a lot of them are not working for us and our workforce, and we have to listen to that.
Q203 Kim Johnson: Samantha, I have a couple of questions on social media. You just mentioned the difficulty in dealing with some of those cases. There have been some high-profile cases only this week. Police officers were found sharing pictures from the Nottingham attacks. One was reprimanded and one was given a final written warning. Do you think that any police officer who is found guilty of sharing across any social media platform should be instantly dismissed because that kind of action is unacceptable?
Samantha Millar: I absolutely agree with your sentiment. We have to deal with everything that comes in front of us. What I want, though, is fairness of process. As Stuart stated, we are absolutely bound up by rules, regulations and procedures. What I want to give you, though, is confidence that, at every single misconduct process that I have been part of, that systematic look at the evidence and the proof of what we need is laid before us. Where the evidence is produced and where we can, we take action. I am quite prepared to and would support anybody to do that.
Social media is not the issue. It is a tool. It is about how it is used. It is about what it is used for. Like you, I cannot look at the murders of those people in Nottingham and understand that behaviour, but I have to let it be judged and done within the regulations.
Q204 Kim Johnson: You mentioned before about how it is monitored and how many are involved in undertaking this type of action. Stuart, do you have anything that you wanted to contribute to that?
Stuart Cundy: It is an excellent question. I look back over time. As Sam was saying, it is not one social media platform or another. It is a tool. It is a vehicle that is used. Do I think that, in policing, over previous years, we have looked at it through the lens that you brilliantly described? No, I do not. Do we look at it in that way now? Yes, we absolutely do.
In fact, certainly in the Met—and I am sure that it will be exactly the same in many other forces—we find that many of the cases that come to light—and I am absolutely with Sam—go into investigations. If there is a case to answer in terms of a breach of our standards of professional behaviour, they should go all the way through to whatever the outcome of that process will be.
We have lawful business monitoring. All police forces have it. That is for work-related devices. As police officers, we have our standards whether we are on duty or off duty, which is quite different to some other professions.
In terms of some of these cases that come to light, you mentioned Nottingham and there has been reporting today of a recent case that is now being investigated within London. I cannot go into the specific details, but we find that, on many occasions, going back to creating the environment, it is individuals in our service who are raising these concerns with us, as well as us finding them ourselves through our proactive endeavours and the many tactics and techniques that we have.
Q205 Carolyn Harris: Before this all came to light, and before the light was shone, as it were, what was happening? Were people reporting things in?
Stuart Cundy: Is this in terms of social media use?
Q206 Carolyn Harris: It is everything: when there were incidents when things were not quite right, when people did not feel right, when there was stuff on social media. Was nobody saying anything?
Stuart Cundy: Some people certainly were. It is a bit like Sam was saying. In my experience in policing, there have always been individuals who have been leaders. Everybody is a leader in lots of different ways. There have always been people that have come forward, called it out, called out concerns that they may have or indeed things that may have happened to them. Did everybody do it who was a victim of whatever the offending might be? No, certainly not. That is where we have been putting huge endeavours in, in London in the Met, to help people build that confidence amongst each other to support them through it so that they do come forward.
Do I think we are identifying everything today? I would be absolutely naïve if I sat here and said that we were. No. Are we much further along that journey? Yes, we certainly are.
Q207 Kim Johnson: The inspectorate has found examples where officers have used suspects’ phones to download pornography and send explicit pictures to female members of staff. I just wanted to know from both of you how big a problem pornography is in the force and whether you are monitoring the escalation of any of these cases?
Samantha Millar: It is a really timely question, because there is an ongoing review of the use of pornography and, in particular, the impact it has on children. It is very topical. Have I seen an increase in the use within our workplace? I personally have not sat on more panels. However, what I would say is that, on most of the misconduct that you do sit on, there is a misuse of telephony or social media becoming more prevalent. As we see crime types change as technologies change, that is going to reflect in our workforce as well. We probably will.
Societal issues around pornography are playing through to some extent here, so we should not be surprised. That means that we should be pre-empting it and asking ourselves questions. Do we have the right practices and procedures in place? Are we looking for it? Are we looking in the right places? Are we asking the right questions? We have to keep up with society. The change is so quick and fast. We cannot be behind it.
Stuart Cundy: If I may build on that, are we seeing substantial increases? No, not that we are actually seeing. Are we seeing cases? Yes, primarily through individuals’ personal devices and the like. There have been some that have been well reported in London.
Maybe a subset of that question is about whether I think it is a potentially growing threat and risk? I will be candid: I do. Speaking to colleagues outside of here, the availability of pornography is quite a challenge. We are all aware of that and recognise it, but it is also the type of pornography. I sit here as a father as well. That is the sort of thing that worries me most, for society as a whole but certainly within policing. That is why there are various things that we have been doing, both in terms of overreporting and investigations, as well as all forces having a lot of covert policing and proactive capabilities. It is what we do. We use the same tools and the same techniques internally to tackle these corrupt activities as we would in terms of tackling organised crime or whatever the criminality might be.
Kim Johnson: Our Committee has found that, in violence against women and girls, it is often pornography that is a determining factor, given that so many young children have free access to it at this moment in time. It is changing attitudes towards sex and what is unacceptable.
Q208 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: Can I come back to you, Sam? When you were articulating that you had been a police officer for 30 years, at the time you were starting your career in West Yorkshire Police I was a civilian in South Yorkshire Police. Do you think my experience of misogyny and sexism would have been different to yours as a police officer at that time?
Samantha Millar: That is an interesting debate to have, is it not? I am amazed, after many years in policing, at how different forces are. You can have different neighbouring forces. Stuart sits in the biggest one and it is different again. Having worked in a couple now, I realise that all forces really do have their own culture. Policing is not different. The public are not really bothered where we come from. They just want a good service, but we know, do we not, that our forces are very different? It does not surprise me that even within the Yorkshire forces we had different experiences.
The delineation between police officers and police staff really has changed over my career. I am so proud of police staff, because they are the backbone and keep our organisation going. They often do it absolutely unrecognised and often without a clear compensation for what they are doing. It is really difficult, but of course we send our police officers out into some of the most physically and emotionally difficult scenarios as well. Thank goodness we have both in the organisations. My experience over the years is often that our police staff can feel very undervalued. That really saddens me, because it takes everybody to make an organisation work. Some of the best colleagues I work with are my police staff colleagues.
Like anything, it is a mixture, but I recognise your point. Different forces really do have different cultures. Even within our forces, depending on where you are, I can appreciate there are different experiences again.
Q209 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: When I joined South Yorkshire Police, it was just post the Hillsborough disaster. If you look at the culture that prevailed at that stage and that informed everything, it was very male. The reaction to that was less aggressive, shall we say. You can see that within different police officers. Leadership is obviously central to this. To what extent do you think, in order for us to make progress in these issues, it absolutely has to be the priority of the chief constable?
Samantha Millar: Chiefs are brilliant at one thing. They are brilliant at many things, but they are brilliant at one thing. That is that chiefs absolutely own their forces. Every chief stands up bold and strong, and really protects and looks after their force, their domain. That is brilliant. That is the character of policing. It is the character of the 43 forces we have. It can cause us problems at times, because you have 43 different views. That sometimes is a challenge, but in the forces that I have worked in, your chief really sets your tone. The chief does set the direction of travel, the tone and the outlook.
Certainly, in the forces I have worked in, I have felt very connected with my chief, and of course generally never see them. Your chief is incredibly important in the leadership; that is the point I am trying to make. That is how it should be, because the chiefs take the responsibility, they are accountable, they should set the tone and they should lead the way.
They should take people like Stuart and me as their leadership teams, as we have progressed through the years. They should be really clear about what they want, what they want us to do, how they want us to do it and the values they set. Of course, that cascades down for me. I want my chief to tell me what they need me to do, because I will do it. I am part of their organisation. The chiefs are incredibly important, but so is the command structure that sits around them, because of course they cascade it through the organisation.
Q210 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: What went wrong in the Met then, Stuart, to end up with the case review that found that process for addressing misconduct was just not fit for purpose? Misbehaviour was frankly allowed to flourish. Where has it gone wrong with the leadership within the structure?
Stuart Cundy: I was speaking to colleagues yesterday. I took over this role literally 12 months ago yesterday. Many said to me, “Crikey, were you away from work on holiday when Sir Mark was moving around some of his senior team?” I said, “No, I volunteered for it.”
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: That is good news.
Stuart Cundy: I joined policing to make a difference. Everybody does. We might sometimes describe it in different ways. I definitely want to take on this role, because I can help make a difference, not on my own but as part of that broad team.
In terms of what went wrong, the Chair asked the first question earlier on to me about whether it is different in the Met. What we are facing is not unique, but we have some uniqueness with our scale, which brings its own challenges when everything happens at such volume. I agree with Sam: chiefs absolutely set a tone for an organisation, but they do not come up with their own plans around, “This is what is going to happen”. They engage; they consult externally as well as internally.
What happened in London is not something new and recent, and this is partly the same in other forces. This is a build-up over many years of challenges. There are many public services in terms of where we prioritise.
I think back to my time. If I may draw a parallel, as a relatively young detective in the Met, I was around when we did the huge focus on anti-corruption activity and built what many referred to at the time as the ghost squad, which was really the first true counter-corruption capability. That was quite a game-changer in terms of how it felt and what it meant about calling out, primarily focused on many detectives but also other colleagues as well. Since that point in time, when the focus was very much on organised criminality, it was not completely fixed but the significance of it and how much of it was going on drastically reduced because of all the activity and the covert policing that we did against colleagues.
In that time, over then a few decades, the eye got taken off professional standards, in terms of what it was and not seeing the emerging changes, threats and risks. We are talking about social media, but it is not just about that. It is about how things were changing. We have always had professional standards units in the Met, as have every other force, but it just was not seen as the priority it needed to be. I would like to hope that, if we had prioritised it in policing, we would not have ended up in the predicament we did.
As I said at the start, we have let down many people, both in terms of Londoners and those that visit and work in London, but also our people in the things that we have been talking about earlier this afternoon.
Q211 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: Ultimately, policing is a career that attracts alpha males. Alpha males are very competitive. If you are going to build a healthy culture, it really has to be completely nipped in the bud. We see it in politics all the time. Some men will always use ways of intimidating colleagues. We are pushy enough to deal with it, but when it comes to other contexts, it can become quite menacing.
In particular, in terms of misconduct, it is one thing witnessing and dealing with misconduct in the workplace, but there are other issues of criminality outside of it. Particularly the case review highlighted domestic abuse. What have you done to deal with that aspect?
Stuart Cundy: Do you mean in terms of the abuse of power by police?
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: Yes.
Stuart Cundy: Yes, absolutely. That has been a huge focus for us, under Sir Mark as well. Sam was referring earlier to understanding what the risks are in our organisation, in the Met. All forces have done what Sam is referring to, which is in essence a data wash against the police national database, which is the police national intelligence system, which all forces feed into, to see whether there are things that we do not know about in relation to our officers and staff. We have gone a lot further than that in London.
In light of the significant cases, in light of Louise Casey’s review, we have looked back 10 years, with our focus on violence against women and girls. We have looked back 10 years at any allegations, no matter what it was, whether it was a criminal case, a conduct case, an internal thing that did not meet a conduct threshold, or anybody previously investigated. That could be a single allegation; sadly, we have some who have multiple allegations against them. We have looked back over 10 years to try to identify what the risk is of these individuals who are still in policing. How many of them pose a threat, a risk, to their colleagues or indeed to members of the public? That equates over a 10-year period.
It is just over 1,600 officers and staff in the Met who have at least one allegation relating to sexual offences or domestic abuse. We have been the force that has led the way. As part of one of the things you said earlier, I was sitting here thinking. Is everybody an alpha male who joins? No. Does it attract some? Yes, absolutely. We have brought in a new approach to vetting. No police officer in the country has ever left policing because they have had their vetting removed from them. Of those 1,600 or so that I have referred to, we have referred about 125 at this point in time—there will be more going in—into this vetting review process, which is looking at the whole history of those individuals.
As I said earlier, some have multiple allegations at different points in time against them. Some do not. This is the ones who are the highest threat and the highest risk. Ultimately, it is a process we have built in and the Home Office, through the dismissals review, is looking to change the regulations, which will allow us a regulatory pathway to exit officers who lose vetting. At the moment, we do not have that pathway, so we have taken another approach, which we think is legally sound and is not being challenged.
I will get my numbers correct, if I may. There are already 22 individuals who have been exited under this process. Interestingly, the plan with this is that they would go to what we would call a gross incompetence hearing. It is not a conduct hearing. It is a performance hearing. That is the path we would take it down. Out of those 22 who have left, only one has gone all the way to the hearing. 21 others have decided themselves, at different points along the way, to leave the Met. I cannot say what their individual motivations were, clearly, but most people could pose a question on that.
Q212 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: I do not want to have a go at you because you are just the messenger; you have picked up this challenge.
Stuart Cundy: I volunteered for it.
Q213 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: It is staggering that that accountability has not happened before. You said you are leading the way. Is that true? I have been a Member of Parliament for 14 years. I have lost count of the number of times I have stood up in the House and criticised the Met for poor culture. I am satisfied things are happening now, but for me it is rather late. Is the Met leading the way or is it an outlier?
Stuart Cundy: It is not leading the way in everything, in the totality of what we are discussing here. We have put in another 25% in terms of our professional standards and vetting workforce, because this is such a priority for us. We are investing heavily to make the difference now, like you described.
I would not profess to say the Met is leading the way in everything. There are brilliant things that happen in other police forces. Although we might have 43 chief constables, like Sam says, we are connected as policing and we are forever looking at other forces, no matter where they may be, in terms of what has worked. In terms of the vetting process I have just been talking through, we have shared and that has been borrowed with pride by others; that is brilliant to see. We have done things the other way around.
Part of what Louise Casey said, and one of her recommendations, was that the misconduct system in the Met is not fit for purpose. I have spent most of my time in the Met. I have worked in another police force as well. We have done the look externally as to how we translate what might work in a smaller police force or a smaller organisation, and indeed outside of policing, because these issues are not unique to policing. What can we take? What can we then reinterpret to make it work for the challenges that we face as well?
Q214 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: I represent a constituency adjacent to the Metropolitan Police. There is a lot of cross-fertilisations between Essex Police and the Met, with people going to and from. I speak to police officers, and they always say to me, “Essex is not like the Met”, meaning it has a better culture. Do you think one of the things is the size of the organisation in terms of what you have to lead? Essex is 3,000 police officers compared to however many.
Stuart Cundy: We have over 30,000. I have worked in other forces as well. That is part of policing culture. You look at another force: “They are nothing like us”.
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: They have worked in both.
Stuart Cundy: There are always organisational differences. Your question is about whether size is the problem. Size itself is not the problem. Sir Mark has made it really clear that this is one of the most significant things for his commissionership as part of reforming the organisation. Tackling this does not sit in isolation from all the other things that we are doing as well. The job for myself, my colleagues and the brilliant people that work with me and for me is to deal with these things and find a way through the difficulties. Sometimes scale can be a challenge, but equally, scale brings real advantages and great opportunities for me.
You may or may not have seen it, but the IOPC—the Independent Office for Police Conduct—published a report yesterday. It looked at about 120 individual cases across a sample of police forces. One of the key things in there and in a previous super-complaint is about, when allegations come in against police officers, making sure that those who are investigating are not connected.
There are concerns, and rightly so, that you have somebody investigating an officer—they are primarily officers—who they have worked with before or things like that. An advantage for the Met, because of its scale, is that we can easily deal with that. Having worked in much smaller organisations of the police force, it can be a real tension, so many forces will ask other forces to undertake their investigations. We have a way that we can manage that.
We brought in, in the Met—and again, the scale assists us—a dedicated professional standards team that deals with nothing apart from allegations of domestic abuse and sexual offences connected to police officers and staff. We are able to do that because of the scale of the MPS. We absolutely needed to do it, but we are able to resource it because the organisation has scale. As ever, there are always pros and cons on it.
Q215 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: You both refer to having cultures that encourage people to call this out, and you have both said that you have experience of doing exactly that, but what was clear from the Casey review was that there did not appear to be any repercussions for bad behaviour, so it became embedded. Also, worse than that, those people who did call it out could find themselves the focus of quite a lot of intimidation. What are you doing to tackle that aspect of it?
Stuart Cundy: Can I focus on the complainants first, if I may? You are absolutely right. Have we, at a point in time in the past, let individuals down? Yes, absolutely, and we should have been able to do much more at the time. Other things are developing that will undoubtedly come to fruition in the weeks and months ahead as well, but when it comes to our conduct investigations or our internal investigations into colleagues, where people have stepped up and stepped forward, they now have much greater support and wraparound.
As I said earlier, it would be wrong of me to sit here and say that every single case is perfect and that, on every single occasion, that wraparound and welfare support is as good as it needs to be.
One of the things that we identified is, where an officer has been investigated and there was a decision made that there is a case to answer, which will take them through to a gross misconduct hearing, it is a bit like the victims of domestic abuse and sexual offences going to the Crown Court. Colleagues who have been in this position will never have gone to a conduct hearing. It is a judicial process.
In terms of the victim care that we provide internally, we have now replicated the things that we have established in policing over many years to support victims through that process when it comes to the Crown Court and magistrates’ court, we have now replicated that in terms of the victim care that we provide internally. Forgive me; I cannot quite remember the first part of your question.
Samantha Millar: Shall I take it? You have done a great job there with what has happened in the Met. Just unpicking that question, it is not going to be sorted out, as Stuart said, just by giving our staff a toolkit. There are many layers. It is about giving people the confidence that, as things are plain in front of them in an organisation, they are going to be believed and listened to. They can do it anonymously if they need to. All those processes will make it much more likely that somebody is going to call out some of that bad behaviour.
More than anything, it has to be led and demonstrated. It has to be behaved. It is about everybody, from the chief to your BCU commanders and local commanders, setting behaviour standards and behaving. Cascading that through their leadership team is so important. Teams and police stations know when something has happened, and it is about what then happens. It is about demonstrating that you are doing what you say you are going to do and that it is not swept under the carpet, because when it is, people will just close down and say, “There is too much risk there for me”.
Q216 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: You have to have the right leaders at all levels.
Samantha Millar: Yes, absolutely. There is no point having a chief who is absolutely determined to lead the way if you do not have that value set throughout. Therefore, it is about your leadership selection as well, and it absolutely has to be about a diverse mix of people. You need a real range of all sorts.
Q217 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: In terms of sexual misconduct by police officers, are victims more likely to be colleagues or members of the public? Do we know? Do we have the data?
Samantha Millar: I will start with this one, because as part of the work that we did in 2021 and 2022, we wanted to understand, of course, the threat of police officers and police staff being perpetrators, but of course as a side product of that, we got to understand our victim profile more. That is really important. Again, we were really constrained with data in terms of how valid a picture we were getting. How had it been reported?
This year, we will probably do a lot better in being able to say what that means and how many of those were working inside the organisation. Of course, the volume of domestic abuse reporting invariably means that victims outside the organisation will outweigh that because of the nature of the volume, but the percentage of understanding the victims inside the organisation is an incredibly important question we need to carry on trying to answer, because that is what we need to know and understand.
Q218 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: If we look at sexual violence as being a weapon of power, and we are talking about an organisation with competitive alpha males, that is a tool to advance against the competition. That is the thing that I want to get a handle on in terms of that behaviour.
Samantha Millar: I just want to pick up on the point that Stuart was saying. Our organisation, the nature of how we are recruiting, and the types of traits that we have recruited in the last few years are changing. I believe the police recognise that it needs a real mixture, and it needs different skillsets to do different roles.
One size does not fit all. We cannot send police officers with one skillset and expect them to be able to do it across every crime. That is just folly, in some respects. It is about trying to represent that in the workforce. Of course, the fact that we have a delineation between police officers and police staff is a great leveller because we get more representation and a more diverse mix in our police staff, which is really healthy. The nature of our workforce is changing, and therefore the opportunities to be a much more open workforce are there for us. It is not one type fits all.
Q219 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: We would all recognise that. There has been a very different change in behaviours that are valued by the organisation. Policing has changed very much, has it not? It has gone from banging up horrible people to making people feel safe. It is a different skillset altogether.
Stuart Cundy: We need to do both.
Q220 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: Yes, exactly, and that is quite difficult. That is why you need the right blend and why you are always going to have these challenges. I am feeling uncomfortable that the style of my questioning makes it seem that I feel that you are all bad, but I recognise that that is not the case. From your perspective, Sam, I have suggested that the Met is an outlier. You can see more.
Samantha Millar: It is a really easy position for me to take because I have never worked in the Met. Stuart and I met when we started, early in our service, and it is brilliant to see people like Stuart leading the Met.
That being said, I have sat in northern forces looking at the Met, knowing it is the biggest one, and knowing that the Met is so enormous and so representative of policing that what happens in the Met often can then ripple its way through the rest of policing, but the Met is just our biggest force. It is just another one of our 43 forces. I have come down, on many occasions, as a public order commander and supported the Met in many events and loved everything I have done. It is no different to working anywhere else, but then it is just different policing.
I have always looked at the Met and thought, “It is hugely complex. How on earth does the enormity of London function?”, but that is somebody coming from a Yorkshire force, I suspect. I am a police officer. I have looked at the Met. It is just the biggest force.
In my current role, I sit in a national team at the moment. I have never ever seen the Met more engaged in the work that I am leading on, which is around the policing response to tackling violence against women and girls, and that is a brilliant place to be. I am having a really positive experience, and that is a good place. I point to a lot of practice that is happening in the Met and align our activity around it and say, “Let’s go and have a look and see if that is working”, because if something is working in the Met, let us use it elsewhere.
The Met is absolutely moving in the right place. That is from somebody who has never worked in it and has not had, over the years, a huge amount of interaction with it, but that is how I view it as a police officer.
Q221 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: Do both of you worry that the negative press that has been levelled through things like the Casey review and high-profile cases will put female victims of violence off making reports? Is there any evidence that that has happened?
Stuart Cundy: Yes, absolutely. All of us are concerned about that, which is why a huge part of what we are doing, how we are reforming internally and our external work is to overcome that and to rebuild that lost trust and confidence from some individuals, certainly from many of our communities in London, and indeed many of the public at large. It is not in the place that any of us would ever have wished it to be.
Can I put a figure or a scale on what it looks like? That is quite difficult. We know that underreporting of domestic abuse and many sexual offences has always been there, but it has, at different times, got incrementally better. Then events occur anywhere—it does not have to be in London—and it takes a step back. Yes, I absolutely do worry, which is why we are determined to get it resolved.
Q222 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: It was a particularly low point when there was the demonstration at Clapham Common. Bearing in mind who the leader of your organisation was at that time, it really compounded the offence. That has been a big setback, and there is still a lot to be done in terms of convincing women that that culture is no longer to be tolerated. Can you tell me things have changed since then?
Stuart Cundy: Things have definitely changed, and the changes that we have made are already making a difference, but it is steps along the way. Are we in the place that all of us in this room wish to be at? No. Of course we are not, but are the things that we are doing, some of which I have described here today, starting to make that difference? They are.
We are seeing that increase in reporting. We are seeing many more cases going through the system. Dismissals of officers are doubling. It is not simply about dismissing officers, but these are some of the things to help rebuild that confidence, alongside the brilliant work that Sam leads with all forces around our external protection of victims, survivors, communities, and those that are at risk. Part of my job within that whole ecosystem is to make sure that we are protecting from those who should not, in essence, be wearing the uniform that I am wearing here today.
Samantha Millar: I was sat pondering whether I should tell you the thing that is going through my head, and I thought, “Right. I will tell you anyway”. My daughter is a newly qualified teacher in London, so we often have conversations about the role I am doing and how she feels. She has no reason to have a negative and difficult perspective on policing, but of course the conversation has often been, “If something happened to you on the tube, how would you feel?” She said, “Mum, there is no way I would report it”.
You have to have those reality checks, because that is somebody who I know of that nature, who has no reason to feel that lack of confidence. What on earth is that about, and how do I fix that, generically, for policing? How do we give women and girls confidence that they will be taken seriously and listened to, and that we will do our best to try to investigate and protect where we can? We have lost the confidence.
Q223 Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: We have. I am sorry, Stuart. You have a really difficult job.
Samantha Millar: We all have a difficult job.
Stuart Cundy: We have a lot of people who are determined to make the differences that Sam brilliantly describes there.
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price: In some respects, we are talking about such a sexualised environment now. Girls are getting younger and younger and being victims. There is not a single woman who has not been a victim of sexual assault at least once in their life, probably repeatedly, and it is happening to them younger and younger and younger.
Now, if we are going to make women feel safe, it is a societal problem. I am sorry, Stuart; you really need to own that there has been a massive setback here. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, is it not? You cannot improve unless you are honest about things that have gone wrong.
I used to work as a regulator, and we always had the view that, if we had a large number of complaints, that was a really good organisation, because people felt it would make a difference. My words of encouragement would be that you are probably at that stage now, in that the more open the Met can be about what has gone wrong in the past, and the more it can demonstrate it is listening and acting, then the more likely that confidence is to be rebuilt, but we are still a way from there, as we have just heard very articulately from Samantha. Good luck. We will support you. We want you to succeed.
Q224 Chair: Stuart, could you just run me through what I think you said? Please do correct me if I have got this wrong. You got rid of the 21 who left on grounds of competence, not conduct.
Stuart Cundy: Yes.
Q225 Chair: Is that a cop-out?
Stuart Cundy: No, absolutely not. These are matters that are not conduct matters. This is about an individual with a whole history of things in the past. Some of those might have been conduct matters, which they might have received a written warning on at some point in the past. Some of these things could be associations with people who, because of our standards of professional behaviour, people are not entitled to associate with.
Vetting should be an ongoing process in policing. Everybody is vetted when we join. You talked about the HMICFRS report at the start of this afternoon. This re-vetting process is something that we have introduced because we identified internally that we believed there were a number of individuals who we thought posed a risk. It is not simply a case that they will definitely leave through it. Some that we put through this process have retained their vetting, but this is alongside our conduct process. If an incident were to occur, we will always go down the conduct pathway, because that is the most appropriate. It is the best way.
With the conduct approach, if they are found at a gross misconduct hearing date and dismissed, they go on the barred list. They would go through a vetting review if it went to gross incompetence as well. Through the conduct pathway under the regulations, if an officer leaves policing while under an investigation, we can put them on what we call the advisory list. This is a list that is accessible, but if it is done through a vetting and a performance pathway, they do not go on the advisory list under the current performance regulations.
Again, as I say, the Home Office dismissal review is intended to make a number of changes, as you are aware, which we absolutely welcome with open arms. The sooner they come in, the better to assist all of us as police forces to deal with some of these individuals.
Q226 Chair: Mark Rowley has been very clear on that.
Stuart Cundy: He has.
Q227 Chair: Sam, we heard from Kath earlier that the tone is set by the chief fire officer. They were basically the ones where the buck stopped, and rightly so. You said that the tone is set by the chief but—correct me if I got this wrong—you then went on to say you do not see them very much. Is part of the challenge that they are not visible enough?
Samantha Millar: Yes, it is right to check me on that. I was trying to articulate that, as a hierarchical organisation, day in, day out, as a routine police officer, you work a shift pattern, so invariably you do not get exposed to your chief constable. They are one person; they cannot be everywhere. I was just trying to make the point that they were not, as a police officer, in my day-to-day life, but I absolutely felt I was working in the organisation I was with the chief constable I had. That is the picture I was trying to convey.
In the bigger forces—I have worked in both; I worked in a big metropolitan force first, and a smaller one—the relationship of the chief to the rest of the organisation is really important, and the strong and good chiefs have a very strong impact across our organisation. It is hard. I have been at the end of many staff surveys that say, “We never see the boss”. The challenge of doing the day job, getting around the teams, being visible on briefings and being at the events is a really hard one to me.
Let us be honest about this. It is probably part of the challenge as to why we do not have a diverse mix. I am a police officer who has worked a lot of part-time hours with a family over the years, and some posts just were never available to me as a part-time officer. Some of this is part of the issue. You cannot work every hour and be seen by everybody.
I have not experienced, largely, a disconnected chief, but I recognise that chiefs set the tone and are really at the top of the organisation, and I understand that they cannot be everywhere. That is why having very engaged local command units and command teams is really important, with people who represent the tone that the chief is setting.
I understand the question. I have had two forces. I have had very good experiences with the chief where you feel very much that you are working for that organisation.
Q228 Chair: Essex Police is coming right in the frame here. Is that because it has a very good reputation? It particularly has a very good reputation for supporting women. What I find tragic still is that I will have female victims of sexual offences say to me, “Okay, it may have happened in London, but I live in Essex. I will be better off reporting it there, won’t I?” How can we tackle that? What is the Met doing so that female victims of whatever the crime is think, “It is okay. It happened in London. I can report it to the Met”?
Stuart Cundy: I could spend another hour discussing that, probably. Clearly, my role at this point in time is very much focused on the internal. Part of building that confidence to report it in London is for us to be seen to be sorting ourselves out as an organisation as well as, in a very visible way, showing that we demonstrate and do that, as Sam mentioned earlier, listening to victim survivors as these cases come in.
It is very difficult to publicise some of these individual engagements with some individuals, but some individuals are incredibly strong. We have seen not just in London, but in many places, individuals who have gone through the most horrific situations step forward and stand up, waiving their lifelong anonymity in some cases; sometimes they do not, but they still come forward. Myself and colleagues in the Met, with other forces, have to flip the coin over from what you describe, Chair, to, “We are confident enough to do it, even if we live in Essex”.
It is not everybody. There are many individuals, both those who have been victims of police officers either under investigation now or indeed cases that have concluded, who do live outside of London or indeed live in London, and have come forward, but we need to significantly improve it, as you rightly say.
Q229 Chair: What level of personal responsibility do you expect your officers to take for the behaviour of their colleagues? Where should that onus be?
Stuart Cundy: We all have an individual and a personal responsibility to stand up for what we see where things are wrong, or to support colleagues who need supporting. It is part of changing the culture. There is a significant onus on those who are in influential positions within organisations, which does not always mean rank, to build that confidence of people to take that responsibility and not be concerned that, “If I do step forward, I am going to have whatever said against me”, or whatever it might be as well.
Absolutely, everybody has a personal responsibility. The job of myself and many others is to help people feel confident enough to exert it.
Chair: Thank you. Can I thank both of you for your evidence this afternoon? It has been hugely appreciated. If there is anything that you feel you have not said that you wish to put in writing, then please do feel free to write to us.