Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Former His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, HC 758
Tuesday 3 November 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 November 2026.
Members present: Dame Karen Bradley (Chair); Matt Bishop; Mr Paul Kohler; Ben Maguire; Robbie Moore; Dr Peter Prinsley.
Questions 1 - 53
Witness
I: Sir Andy Cooke QPM DL, Former His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.
Witness: Sir Andy Cooke.
Q1 Chair: I thank Sir Andy Cooke for coming in front of the Committee. We are looking forward to your reflections from your time as HMICFRS. Can you introduce yourself?
Sir Andy Cooke: I am Andy Cooke. I was His Majesty’s previous chief inspector of constabulary and fire and rescue service. I left that role at the end of March this year.
Chair: Thank you. We have a few questions for you, because we are really keen to hear about how it has gone, what your reflections are and what you think we can learn from this for your successor and across Government. Peter Prinsley will start the questioning.
Q2 Dr Prinsley: Good afternoon. I am Peter Prinsley, the MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. You have been in front of the Committee before. Thank you for coming again this afternoon. My first question is to do with your reflections on your time in office. What achievement during your time as chief inspector are you most proud of, and in which areas do you feel you might have achieved more?
Sir Andy Cooke: I will talk internally and externally. Internally, I am proud of the fact that I have brought together a really exceptional group of people who form the inspectorate, with really good cohesion within the organisation. The organisation gets the highest people scores across the civil service and the Home Office for satisfaction in what they do and for understanding that they are doing a really good job and making a difference.
I have maintained what I think is a strong, sensible independence in the role. It is important that the chief inspector of constabulary and fire and rescue services is independent, but that has to be sensible independence. You do not want to work against Government and others if you do not need to. You need to speak out when necessary, but you need to do what is best for the public, and that means you need to influence both the fire service and the police service in the right way, and make the job as simple as it possibly can be for them, while maintaining the highest possible standards.
Externally, what am I proud of in relation to the role? I maintained good relationships with the numerous Home Secretaries that I served with over that period. I maintained good relationships with both sectors—fire and policing—while at the same time being probably the most draconian chief inspector, who put more forces and fire services into special measures or into “engage” than ever before. Despite being an ex-police officer and an ex-police chief, I worked on behalf of the public, and that has always been my drive—putting the community first.
The reputation of the inspectorate is good, and it has influence throughout. I was heavily involved with the White Paper on reform, with my organisation, for the right reasons: I believe policing needs to change. As well as that, if you look back at the previous “State of Policing” reports, when I did my first report in 2022 I was very clear that neighbourhood policing needed to improve dramatically and that the performance of policing was not good enough in any way, shape or form. I drove both of those very, very strongly from the start, with the simple intention that doing that in the right way would increase the confidence and trust of the community. When I wrote that “State of Policing” report for Parliament in 2022, it was at its lowest ever level. It has started to improve again, I am glad to say.
On the downside, what would I have done differently? I would have pushed harder with the Home Secretaries to do more thematic inspections. There is always a question in the inspectorate. It is a very small budget, and policing gets a very small proportion of the overall budget—too small, in my view, but I would say that. I would have liked to do more thematic inspections during that time. Unfortunately, finance was not available to do that. As the chief inspector, it is important to be able to choose what thematic inspections you do, because you are independent of the Government. The amount of inspections that the Government were asking me to do during that time—in total, I think 382 inspections were done—meant little time for some of the other issues that I would have liked to address. In 2022, that would have been about leadership in particular.
Q3 Dr Prinsley: If you were to appoint an inspector for the inspectorate, what would you ask that person to do?
Sir Andy Cooke: To be impartial throughout, to be fair, to be hard on the sector—you are working for the public, not for the police or the fire service—and to be brave in the decisions that you make. Also, to keep at the forefront of your mind that the community should always come first in everything that you do, and that you need to work as part of a cohesive team—there are 280 people within the inspectorate—to improve community safety.
Q4 Dr Prinsley: Are there things that you could easily measure if you were an inspector of the inspectorate?
Sir Andy Cooke: We measure an awful lot of things, right through—and not just outcomes. When I took over as chief inspector, the inspectorate was—some might say—very much a tick-box organisation. If you had a great strategy, you would get a nice big tick; if you had a great plan, you would have a great big tick. As an ex-chief, I know that that is pointless; what the staff on the ground do in relation to those plans and strategies is what matters.
I therefore changed the focus to a very outcome-based approach, so you could only be a good police force or a good fire service if you were doing the right things for the public, not producing the glossiest, most expensive strategies that you possibly could. I think that has worked. I think that is why we have seen an increase in performance in policing and fire, and that is why we have seen improved culture in the fire and police services—although neither organisation is anywhere near perfect.
Dr Prinsley: You should be congratulated on what you have achieved. Thank you.
Q5 Chair: You talked about thematic inspection versus the focused force-wide ones. In terms of manpower and timing, what is the difference between those? How long would it take you to carry out an inspection that looking at a particular force or a particular area of a particular force, and what about a thematic one across policing as a whole?
Sir Andy Cooke: We inspect every police force and every fire service every two years across England and Wales. That is an awful lot of work to do on its own. In addition, we receive commissions from the Home Secretary—and, on occasion, from PCCs who would like us to look at a specific piece of business. Depending on the Home Secretary and how quickly they want it, such thematic inspections can take anywhere from three months to 12 months. For a really in-depth piece of work, it can take 12 months to interview all the relevant forces and other relevant people, and to go through all the data that is required to draw some good judgments. On the other side of that, for example, the current Home Secretary asked me to a short inspection on the West Midlands police, which was done in very short time and came to the right conclusions, I believe.
Chair: We were slightly involved in that.
Q6 Matt Bishop: Before we start, I declare an interest as a former police officer. Thank you for your service, Sir Andy.
During your tenure, you investigated many forces that were perhaps not as good as they could be, or not as effective on the basics, such as basic investigations and crimes. How much confidence do you have that forces can improve to get those basics right?
Sir Andy Cooke: Forces still have an awful lot of work to do, with a lot of unfinished business in relation to that. To go back to the first “State of Policing” report that I produced, I talked very much about the basics. The public expect the police to do the basics well. We talk about loss of confidence and trust in policing. Undoubtedly, without doubt some of the scandals involving serving police officers over the years have quite rightly dented that terribly, but one of the key issues for people was a growing feeling that the police were ineffective at dealing with what I call volume crimes—the crimes that people see on their doorsteps every day. That is why the push back to effective neighbourhood policing, where officers took action in relation to those who were ruining other people’s quality of life, was so important to me.
By the basics, I do not mean a return to “Dixon of Dock Green”—I am probably one of the few old enough to remember that. It is very much about answering the phone quickly, giving the right advice on the phone, deploying quickly, attending quickly, investigating properly, keeping victims informed, doing the right forensic work, preserving the golden hour—that is so important—and hopefully catching the offender. Elements of inexperience in policing, poor supervision and poor leadership mean that does not happen as well as it should. Some forces are getting a lot better at it, but which forces are good and which are not is very much a postcode lottery.
I draw that back to a great extent to two things. One is the inexperience of young cops and young supervisors, but the other is quality of leadership. As well as being able to inspire and look after the staff, chiefs must have a close, tight grip on performance. If they do not, their sergeants, who are the most important rank in the police, will not have that either.
Q7 Matt Bishop: You mentioned neighbourhood policing, which I remember coming into myself. Has the focus on neighbourhood policing come at the expense of some of the basics and investigative capacities and capabilities?
Sir Andy Cooke: It depends what you call neighbourhood policing. To me, neighbourhood policing means officers who are known in the local area and will take action against those who are committing crime and nuisance. That is exactly what policing needs. People need visible representations of policing, security and law and order in the community who are known to them.
Sadly, during the austerity years, some chiefs thought that neighbourhood policing was a nice to have. It is not; it is an absolute bedrock. I was smiling on Saturday when I saw Sir Stephen Watson’s comment in The Times that neighbourhood policing is the bedrock. Those are the exact words used in the 2022 “State of Policing” report. It is absolutely the bedrock. Getting the basics right is so important for increasing confidence and trust in policing.
The police do some things fantastically well. Homicide investigations are really good 99% of the time, and the way they deal with organised crime can be really good, but some forces are not good enough at the lower level that people see every day. That is why some of the detection and outcome rates are so low.
Q8 Matt Bishop: You spoke a lot about the barriers to forces getting things right. Is the lack of effectiveness in addressing crime predominantly a resource issue, one of capability of forces and officers or a mixture of both?
Sir Andy Cooke: It is absolutely a mixture of both. You get the police service that you pay for. If there was more money for policing, policing would be more effective. If it was not, you could hold chiefs to account for that. There is still a large element of inexperience, and a lot of people do not want to be detectives anymore for various reasons, but policing can do better with the resources that it has. It would do better if it had more resource, but then we come into the structure of policing. Will just putting the money in to address those issues solve the problem? No, it will not. In my belief, the problem will be solved by reorganising the way policing works and a greater reliance on good technology.
Q9 Matt Bishop: This is my last question. You mentioned resources and experience many times. Is there a fundamental problem with retention in the police currently? Is retention the biggest problem, or is it something else?
Sir Andy Cooke: It is inexperience. Retention is a big issue. I think I am right in saying that more and more young officers are leaving than ever before—I do not have the percentage, unfortunately, but there are certainly more leaving than ever before within the first five years of service. Whether that is because the wrong people were recruited during the 20,000 recruitment—that was needed by policing, but was done very quickly and mistakes were made—or because it is just not the police service that people thought they were going into before they joined is an individual issue for those cops who have left. But it is sad to see so many young cops leaving.
Workload is a real issue. One of my roles now is as a professor at Liverpool John Moores University, and I speak to young policing students on a regular basis. The number of actual investigations that they are carrying—that they are having to investigate—is more than I was carrying as a seasoned detective with 15 years’ experience. Something is wrong in the balance of the workload; they are being asked to do too much. There is a high level of stress, which means that the wellbeing provision from forces needs to be a lot better than it is now.
So I think that there are a number of issues. It is a resource issue, an inexperience issue, a capability issue and a complexity issue, because crime has got more complex.
Q10 Mr Kohler: Thank you for interrupting your retirement to join us. Can I press you a bit on what Matt was asking about neighbourhood policing? The College of Policing defines neighbourhood policing as accessibility, accountability, engagement and collaborative problem solving, rather than investigatory skills. In your 2025 national inspection, you talked about a lack of investigative mindset and an operating model that did not promote that mindset. Is there a tension there? And is it a tension that is being addressed?
Sir Andy Cooke: There shouldn’t be a tension. Basically, a neighbourhood officer should be able to do all the above. I am not putting too great an expectation on them, but every police officer, no matter what their role is, should have an investigative mindset. You join policing to reduce crime, prevent crime and solve crime. Every police officer should have that at the forefront of their mind.
It is not about driving around in fast cars. It is not about doing the—excuse the way I say this—sexy bits of policing. It is about actually serving the community, making the community safer and making people feel that they are safe in their houses and safe on the streets that they walk every day. That is what the role of a neighbourhood police officer is.
Problem solving absolutely comes into it, because if you can prevent more, that is fantastic. But taking quick action against those who are really impacting on the quality of life of the citizens of this country is just as important, if not more important, because for every criminal you catch, that is great crime prevention. They are not going to go on and commit more offences once they have been caught, hopefully—unless, obviously, they are out the next day.
Q11 Mr Kohler: I understand that that is how it should work, but in 2025 you said that there was a problem. On the ground, is there a problem in the mindset—between what people have been told neighbourhood policing is and what you want it to be?
Sir Andy Cooke: I think that, if you brought in the current chief inspector of constabulary, his view would probably be very much the same as mine. That is how the college frames it. My view, as an ex-chief and an ex-detective, is probably slightly to one side of that, but if a cop hasn’t got an investigative mindset, they should not be a cop. If they are not prepared to investigate crime to improve people’s quality of life, they should not be a cop.
Q12 Mr Kohler: Did things improve after your 2025 report?
Sir Andy Cooke: It is probably a bit too soon to say. What did improve is the fact that we now have the White Paper on police reform, which, I think it is fair to say, I fully support.
Mr Kohler: We will come to that in a few moments.
Sir Andy Cooke: Okay. Have things improved at the moment? Well, yes: performance is improving; detections are improving and some forces are getting a good rate of—
Q13 Mr Kohler: I meant with regard to the investigatory mindset.
Sir Andy Cooke: It would be impossible for me to say in relation to individuals, but I do know that that increase in outcome performance can only be a result of more people being arrested and better investigations being done. So I think it is fair to say that, yes, there is more of an investigative mindset now than there was previously.
Q14 Mr Kohler: I am going to get told off by the Chair because I have not asked my assigned questions—sorry. Moving on to those, what is your view of the financial challenges facing police forces at the moment?
Sir Andy Cooke: Based on the last time that I was briefed, some forces certainly have big gaps in their finances moving forward. Policing has not had a capital allocation for some time. Forces are already spending an awful lot of the funding that they have—for instance, 90% of funding for IT is spent on current IT, so there is very little room for improving that IT. Reserves are far less—certainly in a number of forces—than they were previously, to make up for some of that shortfall. Without identifying individual forces, I know that some forces have significant financial problems.
To go back to when I first came into the role, I said that the current police funding formula needed to be changed. It has not been changed, despite various Governments saying that they would consider doing so. I am glad to see that it is in this Government’s White Paper and will be considered. The current way that policing is funded is just inequitable. Why should the forces with the highest demand not always be the forces that get the money to deal with that demand?
A lot of it is based on council tax. Fair play to anyone who lives in Surrey, but if you live in Surrey your council tax is high; if you live in Cleveland, it is very low. The money that police get from council tax draws on that inequality. Cleveland is actually a good example, because it is a small force that has real metropolitan issues and real challenge, but the funding that it receives is not fantastic—it is certainly not on a par with some other forces that do not have those sorts of challenges.
That whole approach to funding forces needs to change dramatically. There will be winners and losers, but surely this is about getting a grip on the criminality and other issues in our communities, be it disorder or anything else, and making a difference. The money needs to go where it is needed.
Q15 Mr Kohler: In the last annual report, no police force got a “good” or “outstanding”. Is that down to, or part of, the financial issues? Is it even possible to get “good” or “outstanding” under the current financial model?
Sir Andy Cooke: I would say yes, it is possible to be outstanding. Some forces have improved quite dramatically. Manchester and Merseyside look like they are improving. Some forces are focused on dealing with investigations in a way that keeps victims happier than they were previously and actually catches the people responsible.
It is possible to be good. Resource comes into it, because chiefs—for whom I have every sympathy—have to balance that resource across so many different things. But the issues that are on people’s doorsteps on a daily basis are important. That is where confidence and trust will be brought back, if they do that right.
Q16 Robbie Moore: Just to build on the question of funding, the change in employer national insurance has impacted on the public sector, and a House of Commons Library report has indicated that a rebate, or a grant, effectively had to be negotiated to cover the increase in employer national insurance. Do you think that change in taxation policy has been challenging for police forces?
Sir Andy Cooke: I think any changes on top of the general budget that they get have a great impact. Pay rises impact greatly, depending on the size of the pay rise and what policing can afford to do. It will be no different with the employer national insurance issue. It is all another thing meaning that the citizens of this country get less service because money is being pumped elsewhere, not into where it is needed to keep people safe. If you asked me to go into any more detail on that, I would struggle, so please don’t!
Q17 Robbie Moore: Don’t worry, that’s fine.
It has been briefly touched on already, but I want to move on to recruitment, morale and wellbeing in the police force. As an overview, what would you say has been the biggest challenge in improving police officer morale and wellbeing, and how can it be addressed?
Sir Andy Cooke: In whichever survey you look at, morale in policing is not good across the country. It is better in some parts than in others, but it is not good across the board. Chiefs really do need to make the effort to put police officers and staff first in their thinking—or very closely after looking after the community. The incidence of mental health issues and officer assaults is exceptionally high.
To give you an example, we did an inspection after the disorder of two years ago, and, among other things, we looked specifically at how staff involved in some of those exceptionally vicious incidents were looked after. I was delighted to see that in some forces they were looked after really well and were at the forefront of senior officers’ minds. In other forces, they were an afterthought. That cannot be right and it is one of the reasons for bringing in the National Police Service. Officers cannot understand why the force next to them is getting such a good welfare response while they do not in their own force. There is no balance in relation to that at all.
How do you improve morale and welfare? Certainly, police officers sometimes feel unloved by their own bosses, the Government and media. The police covenant has been going on for a long time now without resolution. If you really do care about the police officers risking their lives daily for you, let us get the police covenant sorted out and in the right place. Successive Governments have looked at that and have discussed it and discussed it and still not come to a resolution.
You need to make police officers feel that they are wanted, but on the other side of that you need to address some of the issues about the workload that they have. That means embracing technology a lot more than policing has done and having the finance to embrace the right technology. I will use the dirty word “AI” in relation to that: it can make a massive difference when used in the right way—if it is sovereign AI and we are sure about safety in relation to it.
There is an awful lot that policing can do to improve those officers’ lives. First, addressing workload and really being serious about their welfare. There is also being led well, which is not always the case, unfortunately—it is in some forces, but not others. There is making them feel once again that they are part of a team who make a difference.
We should also be taking away some of the bureaucracy that they have to deal with on a daily basis, whether that is criminal justice bureaucracy, self-inflicted or on occasion—mea culpa—inspectorate bureaucracy that is putting them through it. I have tried to cut a lot of that out, but there is still some of it left. Finally, there is letting them get on with the job. I think the current statistic is that a police officer spends 13% of the time on patrol—that should be 80%. They are now data inputters, not police officers.
Q18 Robbie Moore: During your time as chief inspector, did the trends or feeling change in terms of retaining experienced police officers?
Sir Andy Cooke: I do not think there was any real effort across the board to retain those experienced police officers. A lot of them come back on new short-term contracts when forces are short. However, an awful lot of the experience has gone from policing, particularly over the time when there was no new recruitment coming through but officers were leaving on the other side.
It is important that police officers learn to do things the right way. Is it right that a tutor constable has got two and a half years’ service? I do not think so. I will swing a blue lamp now, but when I joined the police, experienced cops taught you how to do the job. Now, on occasion, you have inexperienced cops teaching other inexperienced cops.
Q19 Robbie Moore: You briefly touched on the police uplift programme. How do you feel that forces have been able to effectively develop and retain recruited members of the team through the uplift programme?
Sir Andy Cooke: I welcome the police uplift programme because it returned the numbers that were taken away around 2010 to 2012. However, it was done very quickly. The inspectorate reported in 2022 the concerns it had about the fact that some people getting into policing might not be the right people because of that rush to bring people through. That has unfortunately proven to be the case. It is why we are seeing such difficulties with retention of the officers coming through and why we are seeing officers who found policing to not be quite like they expected.
Yes, the uplift was good, but I am sure that if any Government or anyone else had the time again they would not try to cram those people in so quickly. The pressure that put on the police forces themselves regarding recruiting the right people was—“catastrophic” is too strong a word—dangerous in the circumstances. However, not every police force can walk away from it without thinking about the fact that they made some real mistakes during that time as well.
Q20 Robbie Moore: Obviously, culture and leadership vary dramatically within different forces but are incredibly important for steering each force in the right direction. Seven forces were rated as “requiring improvement” for leadership and force management in the last inspection period. Why do you think poor leadership is such a persistent problem in policing?
Sir Andy Cooke: I do have some concerns about how chiefs, in particular, are appointed. One person makes that decision, and that is the PCC at the moment. Previously, before 2010, there was a senior appointments panel that would draw the right people together and make sure that the right field was there. Can it be right that now there is only one person applying for a chief constable’s job? You have to ask the question why. Can it be right that, on so many occasions, the deputy chief constable becomes the chief constable—perhaps because they are known to the person appointing them?
There are some chiefs who have only ever served in one force—don’t get me wrong: some good chiefs have only served in one force. But that cannot be a good thing, because that is the only operating environment and organisation they know. How do they learn? How do they know how things can be done differently? There is a real issue with the appointment of senior officers. I have previously stated my concerns about the small fields that are going for these jobs, and the lack of incentive for people to actually apply for the jobs when they believe that the home-grown candidate is going to be successful.
Q21 Robbie Moore: Obviously, the Government have laid out plans for changing the structure, and PCCs are going. Do you think that will have an impact on the recruitment process for senior leadership or the chief constable, or is it about more than just replacing the structure of who is appointed?
Sir Andy Cooke: I think the White Paper says that they intend to reintroduce the senior appointments panel, which is chaired by the chief inspector of constabulary. That does not make it infallible, but it will also have people from the college—and local government will be involved—to make sure that the right field is being drawn together for a particular role, and for the right reasons. I think it is right to put that national approach back into choosing a chief constable.
At the end of the day, the decision should be made locally, but the field should be the right field, and who is chosen should be open to scrutiny. Whoever chooses that chief should be available to be asked, “Well, why that person?”, as opposed to just one person being the judge and jury.
Q22 Robbie Moore: I want to ask about those who are coming through to those leadership positions. What, if anything, do you feel needs to be changed about the support, training and assistance given to those moving up the hierarchy to be able to get to the point of effectively going for the top job as chief constable? What, if anything, needs to change to support that progression?
Sir Andy Cooke: Policing has not been great at identifying people who have the promise to become chief officers. Quite often, promotion in some parts is based upon how good you are at the job you are doing, as opposed to the job that you will be doing—I know that is the same as many other industries.
I note that the leadership commission talks very much about how they can bring people through from those ranks, such as having a leadership academy as part of the college or policing. I am very much in favour of something that focuses directly on those people who are younger in service and who may one day be future leaders. I am fully supportive of that.
I am less supportive of direct entry at superintendent level, which is in the leadership commission’s report. I think we have tried that before, and I do not see any great success from it. I can point to one or two people who have done well, but there is an awful lot more people on that who have not done as well as would have perhaps been expected, and that was a very expensive approach to take
I think that developing those people within policing is important, and I would very much support giving opportunities to those people in policing at the senior levels—not just the chief level but superintendents and chief inspectors—to go and work outside policing for 12 months in industry, the third sector or wherever to get a different perspective on life.
Q23 Chair: One of the things we hear about quite often relates to training, and the comparison that is made between the number of weeks of training that are given to senior police officers and the military. Do you have any comments on that?
Sir Andy Cooke: You can become a chief having done only about nine months-worth of training in total, which is just not right. Sir Andy Marsh, my replacement, who was in charge of the college, would forever try to get more training done. For chiefs, it is difficult because you have to release people. Things do not stand still for you.
The armed forces are not always in combat. For police officers, every day there are challenges that they need to address, so they do not get that much time. But the training has to be better, and from earlier in their career as well—not just from the 10 weeks you do to become a chief constable or a chief officer. That has to be right through a career and tailored to what is required to make a successful police leader. Policing maybe needs to look outside policing for assistance with that, to other people who have done it well.
Q24 Chair: A bugbear of mine is the role that policing plays in dealing with people in mental health crises. I will pay tribute to Merseyside; when I was a Minister, Merseyside was the exemplar for having health-based places of safety rather than putting people into police cells. That is absolutely the right thing to do when somebody is having a mental health crisis. We do not lock somebody up with a broken arm. Why would we lock someone up with a broken mental health situation? Has that improved over the years? Are the police still spending a lot of time dealing with that?
Sir Andy Cooke: Policing is still dealing with an awful lot of mental health issues. They are far better at it now than they used to be, I am glad to say. However, an awful lot of police time is spent dealing with these issues. If my daughter had a mental health episode, I would not want a police officer dealing with it.
Chair: Exactly.
Sir Andy Cooke: It is not a policing job, but it is the police who are always called, because they are the ones who are always there and who can get there. We need to look again at how we deal with this issue, because it is not a job for police officers. They will do their best—there is no malice in it—but they are not mental health professionals.
Q25 Chair: In my experience, policing became the agency of last resort; every other agency failed, and policing was the one that always came in to pick up the pieces, spending time doing things that are not criminal—not dealing with crime but with societal problems. Policing was always brought in, and it is a frustration that 10 years on, this still seems to be the issue.
Sir Andy Cooke: It is. A lot of good work was done on changing how that was dealt with and the responsibilities of other parts of the organisations—the “right care, right person” approach. However, there is still too much emphasis on some of the issues there. This is not just about mental health issues; it is about dealing with people missing from home, children who are absent from care and some of the care homes. They take up so much policing time because the first thing people do is phone the police. They have to have some parental responsibility for those people they are looking after; it is not for the police to do.
Q26 Chair: Missing people is the thing that has frustrated me more than anything else over the years. I am talking about the inability of all the agencies to treat this seriously—it relies on policing, and it is not a policing job. Those missing children, in particular, are the ones who are being abused and exploited and who end up carrying out crimes on county lines. That is at the hub of so many of the problems, yet no one seems able to find a way to grasp it.
Sir Andy Cooke: When I was a young detective—or not that young—I used to joke about the five o’clock social services call on a Friday with the difficult problem. You knew you were getting the call because they were going home for the weekend—
Q27 Chair: It is the same with a homeless person. When my office gets a call at 4.30 pm on a Friday—“What do we do with someone who is homeless?”—where do you go, apart from policing?
Sir Andy Cooke: The public want policing to be focused on the issues that they really care about. Mental health is an important issue, but it is not for the police. The absent-from-care issues should not be for the police. People missing from home occasionally are for the police, because of the urgency to find someone and so on, but it should not be the long-term responsibility of the police to do it.
Chair: Absolutely.
Q28 Matt Bishop: Sir Andy, you have already partly answered my question, which is about whether you support direct entry. In many careers, a headteacher would have been a teacher, and a senior medical consultant would have been a junior doctor and done all the training, and so on. Policing is important—the police protect us—and if you are going to be the chief constable of a police force, you should at least have had some experience of all parts of frontline policing, including CID, investigating crime, traffic, firearms. We are sometimes making life-and-death decisions. Do you agree that there should be a minimum term of frontline policing first?
Sir Andy Cooke: Absolutely. I am one of the few exceptions in policing; I was a slow learner. I was a constable for 11 years before I got promoted, and I got promoted really quickly after that. The time that you spend on the frontline makes a massive difference to how you deal with and understand issues moving forward.
People always equate direct entry in policing with direct entry in the military. We are talking here about direct entry to superintendent. There is no direct entry to colonel in the military, so why would they think it will work in policing? Why do you think those people would get the respect that they need off frontline officers who know they have not done this in policing? It is so much harder for them. There have been one or two exceptions who have done well; I accept that, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule, as opposed to being the right thing to do moving forward, in my opinion.
The current chief inspector may have a different opinion—I am giving a personal opinion on this—but in my 41 years of experience dealing with policing, you cannot beat understanding your operating environment and having seen some of the difficulties that people who you are looking after go through on a daily basis. Going through that career, you see some of the worst situations and you cannot unsee them. If you have not seen that, how can you properly understand what it is like to be in charge of thousands of police officers and police staff?
Q29 Dr Prinsley: The other place where the lights are always on is the accident and emergency department. Either the police or the hospital are the two places where people go. We learned in an earlier session that a relatively large number of chief constables are not at work; they are suspended for one reason or another. I think it was eight or nine out of 42; that might be wrong, but anyway, it seemed like a very large number. If that were the case, say, in surgical departments in hospitals, that would be a massive great problem. My question is: are we really asking too much of chief constables? Have we created a situation in which we are asking them to do something impossible?
Sir Andy Cooke: No. Being a chief constable is a tough job: in your local area, you are probably the one individual with the most power, including mayors and others, because you have the power of liberty over people, and so on. It is a real responsibility to be in that position, but it is not asking too much. It is a thankless task on occasion, because you have 24-hour surveillance of police officers these days and you have 24-hour media. It really is a difficult environment to work in and mistakes will get made, but it is not an impossible job.
Even the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who undoubtedly has the toughest job, does not have an impossible job. Not many individuals come out of that job with their reputations as 100% as when they went in, but if they do it right, have the right intention and set the right standards, it is not an impossible job. Bear in mind that the chief is there to set the standards, so that many chiefs suspended at one time raises a question. It will go back to who appointed the chief in the first place, as one of the questions that needs to be asked. I am not saying that they were all wrong or all guilty of what has been alleged in relation to them, but that is by far the most chief officers I have ever known to be suspended at one time. Some of them will have done nothing wrong; I am very keen to make that clear. They are just allegations, but it does not put policing in a good light when those who set the standard are under investigation.
Q30 Dr Prinsley: It was certainly one of the most striking statistics that we heard in the conversations we had about this.
Sir Andy Cooke: It is disappointing. Let me also say that I know of at least one occasion, maybe more, where the chief has been suspended and they should never have been suspended in the first place, but that is a different issue.
Chair: It is a bit like being a senior politician.
Q31 Ben Maguire: Thank you, Sir Andy, for coming in and sharing your expertise with us. Do you think the Police Leadership Commission has made effective recommendations to address the shortcomings in police leadership?
Sir Andy Cooke: Yes, I do, across the board. I had the opportunity to speak to Lord Herbert and Lord Blunkett as part of that. As I mentioned, I do not necessarily agree with every single recommendation they have made, but I think they are absolutely right that there needs to be a change. There needs to be a positive change in relation to the leadership, not just at chief officer level but right through policing. Introducing the leadership academy is undoubtedly the right thing to do.
So across the board, I support what the Police Leadership Commission is trying to achieve. I know that the College of Policing will follow up in relation to that. I agree on one of the issues that they put forward: there should be a senior constable rank to reflect better those who want to stay doing that frontline job and do not want to go any further. That works in other countries such as Australia. Overall, yes, I am supportive of the general thrust of what the leadership commission has proposed. I hope that policing continues to follow through with 90% of it.
Q32 Ben Maguire: I have a case study from my Devon and Cornwall force, following Peter Prinsley’s point about suspended chief constables.
Sir Andy Cooke: I was waiting for this question.
Ben Maguire: We currently have two suspended chief constables still on full pay. I completely agree with your point about the person appointing the chief constable. What you say is interesting about it being just one person versus a panel under the previous system. We have just heard that nine women were paid compensation by Devon and Cornwall last week over police abuse claims—including rape, assault and coercive control—after not being taken seriously at the time, with complaints ignored. One question I have is about misconduct of individual police officers. Is that example about individual officers, or is it, as we have just been talking about, a serious issue of police leadership? That is obviously just one example—one force—but the Casey review pointed to similar issues in the Met.
Sir Andy Cooke: If you look at the Casey review, the Angiolini inquiry and the reviews we have done, we have found bad culture across policing and fire and rescue on a number of occasions. That cannot be denied or hidden. I will not look at an individual force. I have a lot of respect for the current chief constable of Devon and Cornwall; I think he is a very good chief. He might not have been dealt the best hand in life, but he is certainly a decent man.
Leadership does come into it, undoubtedly, because the leader should set the standard. Recruitment and recruiting the right people comes into it. Vetting is a massive part of that—not just vetting for new officers coming in, but continued vetting for officers across the board. When either corruption or particularly bad behaviour is identified, it is also about how quickly you remove those people and how you publicise moving those people.
Recently, I saw a figure that more officers than in the recent past have been sacked from policing in the last two years, and that is absolutely right. Policing needs to do its dirty washing in public. It needs to show that it is getting rid of those individuals who besmirch the 98% of officers who bravely, on a daily basis, do a fantastic job on our behalf. I have no doubts about that at all. That small number of people besmirch the whole reputation of policing, so it is incumbent on chief officers—chief constables, particularly—to maintain the highest standards, and to use whatever means necessary to root out those who let policing and the public down in such a disgusting way, as we have seen. It is also for other officers to identify those people in the Met. I do not know the detail behind the Devon and Cornwall case that you just mentioned, unfortunately, but it gives a terrible impression of policing when issues such as that come out.
Q33 Ben Maguire: I completely agree that there are fantastic officers who do lots of good work every day. My question is not meant, in any way, to take away from that. That was just one example where the force has had that specific problem, to illustrate that issue. Particularly following the Casey review of the Met police, it is clearly not just a Devon and Cornwall issue.
Sir Andy Cooke: You will find bad culture across every organisation in this country, not just police and fire. You will always find elements of bad culture. How well and how quickly the leadership deals with that is so important, before it spreads wider.
Q34 Ben Maguire: You mentioned strengthening vetting procedures; I would be keen to get your views on that. I give credit to James Vaughan, the new chief constable, for apologising and taking action, but we often hear that action will be taken. In your view, what needs to happen so that action is not just taken in the heat of the moment but reviewed and followed up further down the line to make sure that none of that happens again?
Sir Andy Cooke: Absolutely. We have to square that circle to make sure that that learning is actually learnt because you hear an awful lot of people saying, “We will learn from this”—I think we have heard that quite recently. Half the role of the inspectorate is to see that they have learnt those lessons moving forward.
My ex-colleagues are like a dog with a bone on occasion to see if that learning has actually happened, but not just in that force. It is incumbent on policing as a national body of 43 chiefs to learn from each other as well. It is no good if the lessons learnt in Devon and Cornwall are not learnt in the West Midlands, for instance. Policing is not very good at that. Policing is a world leader in many things; it is also a world leader in organisational arrogance—it is the Hampshire way of doing it or the West Midlands way of doing it. There is always a better way if you are prepared to look for it, and that is what policing does not do enough of.
Q35 Ben Maguire: Following on from that, how do you see the role of the IOPC in this landscape, and how effectively do you feel that it is currently being performed?
Sir Andy Cooke: I think we have seen a distinct improvement in how the IOPC performs over the last couple of years. Rachel Watson, the director general of the IOPC, is doing exactly the right things to improve that organisation and the way it deals with police officer misconduct. It will not get it right all the time, but it is definitely improving. It is not there yet. It is unfinished business, but I think we have seen definite improvements. The accountability review that Dame Lynne Owens is doing with Jason Beer will shed more light on that and on the best way to proceed. It has not reported yet.
Q36 Ben Maguire: The next question is about the performance and efficiency of the professional standards department in dealing with complaints. I have had at least two or three constituent cases that, in some cases, have taken years to get a response to their complaint. Often, the homework is marked by colleagues of the policeman or woman who the complaint was about. There has been talk of getting other forces from other parts of the country to look at the complaint independently, because, of course, before it even gets to the IOPC, that process has to be followed through and some kind of wrongdoing has to be found. In the case I referenced earlier with the nine female victims, complaints were ignored. In some cases, counter-allegations were made and they were arrested. I am interested to hear what can be done to improve the complaints process and make it more independent.
Sir Andy Cooke: In the inspections that we did, it was quite clear that, at times, some inspections took far too long. In relation to who should investigate the complaint, members of the public will say that the police complaints process is too soft and police officers will say it is too hard and too draconian.
Q37 Ben Maguire: The independence part of it is the key.
Sir Andy Cooke: As a chief, I did give other forces investigations on my behalf, depending on what they were. That does happen with the more serious investigations. Rather than investigate it yourself, you will ask another force to do it. So that does happen. But the best person to investigate a corrupt cop, in my view, is a cop, because they know exactly what they should and should not be doing. I have worked with some absolutely outstanding counter-corruption police officers in my time. They would go to the nth degree when they knew something was wrong to get these people out and get them to prison on occasion.
I cannot speak for every PSD across the country, but generally they play exactly by the rules. They take too long on occasion to get to the conclusion they need to get to. At times, things could be dealt with differently from going through a full formal investigation process, but they do their best in difficult circumstances. I have a good degree of confidence in it. Again, it is unfinished business. There is work to be done to make it better. Once the accountability review reports on its findings and the IOPC continues to improve the way that it does its business, as it is doing, I think things will start to improve.
Q38 Ben Maguire: Let me press you on that independence point. You said that some complainants think the process is too soft and some police feel it is too harsh. Would it not be much more straightforward and fair if there was a completely independent outside person? We all know we have our own biases when we are, for example, investigating colleagues and things like that, even with the very best will in the world. Would it not make more sense just to make it completely independent and then you do not have those two sides conflicting with each other?
Sir Andy Cooke: My first question would be: who would do it? I know who I want to investigate a cop, and that is a good, experienced cop, because they know how to investigate properly.
Q39 Ben Maguire: But from a different area so that they are not working day to day with each other.
Sir Andy Cooke: There would be an awful lot of cross-flow of officers going back and forth, and it would be a very expensive way of doing it. Would it work? Not for every complaint. Would it work for the more serious complaints? It could work. I am not saying it is the wrong idea, and it does happen on occasion. Should it happen more? It is a possibility.
Q40 Matt Bishop: Turning to the reforms in the White Paper, which we have discussed, in your opinion, which aspects of the proposed reforms will make the biggest difference to the effectiveness of policing?
Sir Andy Cooke: If you take just parts of the reform White Paper and pick bits of it out, it will be less effective than if you take the vast majority of it and use that as part of reform. Reduction of forces is essential—I know numbers on that have been bandied around. If we do not take up the opportunity to reduce the number of forces, it would be a missed opportunity to professionalise policing to the nth degree. We have 43 in this country, and that is too many. Some of the forces are too small to exist and cannot do everything that is needed in the modern day.
Policing is no longer local, like it was previously; a lot of it is regional, national and international, as we have seen in some of the fraud issues. Many of the changes are years, and some decades, overdue. It was a great model for 1964, 1965 or whenever it was implemented, but it is not a great model anymore, given the amount of public money that has been wasted in relation to procurement, IT or wanting to do things in one particular way because they feel that is right, with no evidence base to support that. Surely those days are gone. We need to have some direction for police forces across the country, to make them more effective, and certainly more efficient, than they are now.
Obviously, I welcome new powers for the inspectorate as part of the reform; as you would expect, I pushed hard for them over a number of years. I fully agree that the Home Secretary and the Home Office should have a greater say in policing. You have to balance that with operational independence, but that is operational independence, not organisational independence—chiefs themselves get confused about that sometimes.
It is absolutely right to look again at the police funding formula. The trick for making this acceptable across the country is to make sure that the local policing areas are right and have the right governance, to reassure people that their policing is still local. You do not need 43 headquarters in a country this size—no other company would have 43 headquarters doing the same job, or what should be the same job, across a country this size—but you do need a very clear approach to local policing. For me, the key to cracking this is in the local policing area approach, and making sure that that and the governance of it is right.
For national issues, the Home Secretary should have a far bigger say in what policing does and how it works together. Let me give a quick example, on disorder. With the disorder a couple of years ago and our inspection into it, one of the recommendations in the White Paper is to have a national co-ordinator for disorder, because we went into detail about how quickly the police mobilised, the intelligence behind how they did so, etc. No one person in this country can say, “Policing, you must do this.” The National Police Service will give us that. It will be able to say, “For issues of national importance, we will work together like this. This is what we are going to do.”
It will not be individual chief constables derogating from decisions—under National Police Chiefs’ Council rules, if a chief does not like a decision, they can derogate from it and do not have to do it. That is not how you deal with some of the serious issues that we have in this country at this time. Those issues are not going to get better; there will always be challenges for us. Now is the time to professionalise our police service in the right way, and for me, this is how we do it.
Q41 Matt Bishop: You touched on some of the risks. What about timescales and timeframes? If the majority of the White Paper is, as you say, left as it is, how soon could the key benefits be realised?
Sir Andy Cooke: It is difficult to give a timescale, but if we delay, nothing will happen. I think a decision needs to be made by the Government whether to go ahead with this. If they do not, I think that would be a massive mistake—I will be honest—but if they are going to go ahead with it, they need to find the right finance to get it moving, to get the National Police Service in place, and to start the massive long-term savings from bringing procurement, IT, CT and the NCA into one place and to reduce the number of police forces.
I have no doubt that that will improve the way that policing is delivered in this country, and it will save a fortune. That money can be redirected into keeping our citizens even safer. The situation is crying out for that. Policing cannot carry on as it is at the moment, and any delay in decision making for this White Paper on reform is, I think, a massive missed opportunity.
Q42 Matt Bishop: My last question: given the pressures that we have discussed and you have talked about, and the potential issues in policing, how difficult or easy will it be to realise the benefits, bearing in mind some of the serious concerns that have been raised today?
Sir Andy Cooke: It takes will. Let me give you an example. The system leaders in policing are fully behind the police reform White Paper. I was fully behind it. This change was needed. It is the first time that I can recall in my policing service when the heads of the Metropolitan police, of the college, of the inspectorate, of the NCA and of the IOPC were all agreed on what needed to be done to improve policing. Surely the amount of years of expertise that sit behind that show a good judge of character, and that something needs to change.
The only thing that will prevent it changing is localism, and that is misplaced localism. By adopting that localist approach, you are not going to keep your local community safer; you are just going to waste more money, be less effective and be more inefficient, and you will not have the benefit of better IT systems, better procurement approaches, and a National Crime Agency and counter-terrorism approach that works hand in hand, dealing with some of the same sorts of issues at the same time. I think it would be a massive win for this country to take this forward and to do so as soon as possible.
Q43 Chair: You will probably not be surprised that I am slightly sceptical, representing a constituency on a border area. My boundaries are Cheshire and Derbyshire; I am in the west midlands, but those are in the north-west and the east midlands, and I am quite a long way from the centre of the west midlands. I do worry about that. For example, what happened to the Staffordshire ambulance service going into the West Midlands ambulance service is not a happy story from the point of view of my constituents. A lot of work will be needed to sell this one to me.
Sir Andy Cooke: Dame Karen, I agree, which is why it is crucial that the focus is on those local policing areas and their powers to deliver what needs to be done for local people, while leading the national to a national approach.
Chair: I think national police force is the right approach, and that that is something that probably has been evolving over time. With the creation of the National Crime Agency and others, there has been this move towards that. I do not disagree with the national police force; my cynicism is about my constituency and how that might work. Paul Kohler might have equal cynicism, but I never know with Paul.
Q44 Mr Kohler: The Committee has asked my questions really, but let me quiz you a bit harder. Could we address procurement and IT issues by giving less autonomy to individual police forces? Part of the problem is that systems do not talk to each other. We could deal with that by mandating the systems that forces use. Could we maintain the local while addressing problems in procurement and IT simply by taking those away from them?
Sir Andy Cooke: Basically, yes. Different approaches could be taken. You could mandate. Governments consistently have been reluctant to mandate on policing. On occasion, I have asked Governments, Home Secretaries or Police Ministers to mandate certain issues to improve policing, and they are very reluctant to do so, for whatever reason that is.
Different approaches could be taken. I was on the advisory board for Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, when he was drawing together this reference. I have seen the work that has gone into it, the testing of different approaches to what can work, what will not work and what has the best chance of working. That is why I have faith in what he has put forward. Other things can work—it is not one size fits all, but I do think that this is a great fit for policing in England and Wales.
Q45 Mr Kohler: How would you address that concern? The Scottish example was a success on many levels, but at the local level, there was that tension between local and regional—or local and national in that context. How do you actually address the local? What would you be doing? You say that it has to be addressed, but how?
Sir Andy Cooke: Through very strong local policing areas that have chief superintendents or similar who are in charge of those areas, and who have a good deal of autonomy to deal with the local issues as they find them. They must have good governance, which involves a local mayor, local council, local policing board or whichever it is for that local policing area. The trick is that you are obviously going to have governance at not only the force level but nationally, so it is about making sure that they are complementary and not working against one another in relation to it.
I do not think it is beyond the wit of policymakers to achieve that, but I think it is exceptionally important that people feel that local policing is there for them. You really do not need a headquarters around the corner. As someone who has inhabited headquarters for as short a time as I possibly could, you really do not need them. The work is done on the frontline, and the difference is made on the frontline. Those chief superintendents and borough commanders, or whatever you want to call them, are the ones who can really make a difference for that local area, without excessive interference from headquarters.
Q46 Mr Kohler: I must say that I was persuaded by the argument, then but I was petitioned by the City of London, which is very concerned about losing the City of London police force. It said that that was a specialist force that cannot just be absorbed into the Met. What would be your view on that?
Sir Andy Cooke: That is a good question. The City of London is an historic police force, and it is well supported by the City itself. It has always had that bit of autonomy and that bit of additional funding for various reasons. They are very proud as a police force, even though it is a very small police force and very different from most other police forces, because of the low residence and so on. Part of me says that it should continue, and part of me asks whether, in a new world, you can justify its continuation. I am opting out of the answer.
Mr Kohler: You’re as ambivalent as me!
Sir Andy Cooke: I have friends in both.
Chair: Paul, do you want to ask your AI questions?
Q47 Mr Kohler: Oh, straight to that—indeed. You have talked about technology, and I think the figure is that 97% of police money is spent on legacy IT systems, which is quite extraordinary. Your successor, when he came before us, said, “I will be absolutely clear with you that policing is barely in the foothills of data insight.” Would you agree with that?
Sir Andy Cooke: Absolutely. Policing has a lot of data, but it does not use it very well, and what it does have, it does not have it to hand. The systems that policing uses to collate that data and to make it available for the individual who needs it are far too complex.
Policing has been romanced into buying various different computer systems over the years, which just add layer on layer on layer, and that is not the answer. The answer is to start again and look at what police officers on the frontline need to do the right job, and what commanders need to understand what is happening in their areas. Overall, policing does not have that, so it needs to invest quite significantly in new technology that will make a difference, not just layer on top of the current technology.
To give a great example, I think the police national computer is nearly as old as me—that is ridiculous. In this day and age, we need to look at how policing can better deliver for the citizens of this country, and have the tools at the fingertips to do so. Investigation is complex enough, and we have seen how crime has increased in complexity. The amount of data that is coming in is incredible, and I agree that policing is in the foothills of this. However, it does not have the finance to do it differently. It cannot just ditch the legacy systems, so it will require finance to make a difference.
Q48 Mr Kohler: When we explored this question with Sir Andy, he told us that, in Avon and Somerset in 2017, he was federating data, and with great success. Why did that learning not get absorbed by the police service more generally?
Sir Andy Cooke: I take you back to what I said about the arrogance of some different forces about what they think they need. Sometimes they are tied into long contracts, which means that they cannot pick up something new that comes through. IT companies are very keen to sell to policing, and there are 43 customers who all want slightly different things, so it is a great pot.
When we have a national police service, there will be one purchaser, which will give us far better ability to adjust prices. Some of the prices for police IT have been ridiculous, as have some of the things that have been bought. You have amateurs buying equipment that is with them for a long time but does not improve the safety of citizens or the ease of the officers in doing their jobs, for many reasons that I will not go into at the moment.
There is an awful long way for policing to go in relation to that. In 2017, Andy was, I am sure, doing some good work in Avon and Somerset. I was chief of Merseyside at the time and I did not know what work he was doing in Somerset—that is one of the reasons for this. Technology has moved on so quickly, though. What Andy was doing in 2017 will not make a difference now.
We need to look differently, starting from the bottom and working right through what police officers do and what IT we can introduce. How can we employ the right AI and bring in the right robotics to allow police officers to get back on their patches for 80% of the time, not the 13% of the time they do at the moment? That is where you start. Nowadays, police officers are, to a great extent, purely data inputters; they spend too long tapping away at keyboards—double-keying, treble-keying and 15-keying on occasions—to get the right information. That is not 2026.
Q49 Mr Kohler: Indeed not. The issues are the same, though—although there are now perhaps new software providers offering solutions. Again, good, bad, indifferent—we do not know. Do you have any views on the Palantir saga with the Met?
Sir Andy Cooke: Perhaps I can recuse myself from that question. One of my roles now is working for an AI start-up, so it would be wrong of me to comment.
Q50 Mr Kohler: Okay. Does that mean I cannot ask you about the use of AI?
Sir Andy Cooke: Not specifically.
Q51 Mr Kohler: Let me try, and you can say if it is inappropriate for you to answer. This Committee saw how AI was misused in the Maccabi Tel Aviv affair. There is rather a temptation—we all have it—to use AI to take shortcuts. Is that an issue for policing, and how will policing address it?
Sir Andy Cooke: For a start, my view has always been that there needs to be a human in the loop in relation to it, but you cannot trust everything that comes off a general AI platform, so how do you address that for policing? How many systems are actually built for policing? The systems that come into policing have usually been developed for the health service, for defence and so on. They have never been built specifically for policing. Maybe that is something we should start on—looking specifically at what policing needs, as opposed to what can be fitted in to slightly improve policing by half a per cent. But it would be wrong for me to say any more about that.
Q52 Chair: On the use of technology—facial recognition and all the different things—are you confident that there is a statutory underpinning that gives law enforcement the confidence to use that technology?
Sir Andy Cooke: I think it is important that there is a statutory underpinning of what policing does. Some of these issues make the public feel uncomfortable, so policing needs to properly explain what it is doing, why it is doing it and the results of what it is doing. At times there is a lot of misinformation about the likes of facial recognition. The images are not kept—it is not like there is a big store of people’s faces somewhere; that just does not happen. Should the computer alone be able to say, “That is the person”? No, there needs to be a human in the loop. If I was a cop, would I arrest someone based on facial recognition identification? No, but it would give me cause to say, “I am going to make more inquiries about you before I take the next steps.”
Q53 Chair: That is the same with AI, isn’t it? You need a person to apply judgment. That was missing from our experiences previously. Is there anything else you want to say to the Committee before retirement takes you away from appearing before Select Committees?
Sir Andy Cooke: My wife disagrees that I am in retirement; I think I am working more than before.
One thing I will say—I mean it from the heart—is please support your police officers, who get it right 99% of the time. They do a thankless task in sometimes impossible circumstances. Sometimes they are well led; sometimes they are not. But those cops make a difference. In my 41 years in association with policing, I have been so proud of the compassion, bravery and professionalism I have seen, which have taken my breath away and continue to do so. It does not matter if they are cops from 41 years ago or cops who are just joining now; they all deserve the same respect for what they do on our behalf. They do things that most of us would not even dream of doing. That is all I would like to say: please support the police.
Chair: Thank you very much. I look forward to thanking my officers when I see them on Sunday at Remembrance events, of which we will have many, as I am sure will many colleagues. Thank you, Sir Andy, for your time and reflections, which we will use to scrutinise your successor and the work of police reform and other matters as we go through our work over this Parliament.