Home Affairs Committee

Oral evidence: College of Policing, HC 800
Tuesday 9 December 2014

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 9 December 2014

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Members present: Keith Vaz (Chair), Ian Austin, Nicola Blackwood, Michael Ellis, Paul Flynn, Dr Julian Huppert, Tim Loughton, Yasmin Qureshi, Mr David Winnick.

Questions 1 – 200

Witness: Sir Hugh Orde OBE QPM, President, Association of Chief Police Officers, gave evidence.

Q1 Chair: I welcome Sir Hugh Orde, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, to the Committee’s inquiry into the new policing landscape, particularly the role of the College of Policing and how it has done over the past couple of years. The Committee should note the fact that you, Sir Hugh, have announced that you will be stepping down as president of ACPO—indeed, from the police service as a whole—after so many years of service to our country as a senior police officer. I am glad that you have been able to come to speak to us about these matters. We acknowledge the huge contribution that you have made to British policing.

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is most generous of you, Chairman. Thank you.

Q2 Chair: ACPO is still very much with us, so before we move on to discuss the College, could you comment on a remark made by one of your members? Earlier this week, Neil Rhodes made the most extraordinary statement that the cuts that have been instituted over the past four years will mean that his force will effectively go out of business within three years. That is important not only for Lincolnshire but in our view of how we train more police officers. Do you share Neil Rhodes’s concern that the regime of reductions that the Government announced four years ago is now starting to bite local forces in a big way?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The short answer is that yes, it is going to get more challenging. It is not only Chief Constable Rhodes saying that. I must admit that the front page of the Telegraph the other day took me slightly by surprise. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has observed that the next round of cuts will make it more difficult and that cuts in numbers are inevitable. With our devolved model of policing, with 44 forces—if you include my old service, the Police Service of Northern Ireland—of such varying sizes, some of the smaller ones will come under increasing pressure. As you know, there are a number of anomalies in the funding formula. I think that the chief constable was articulating a concern about the specific circumstances of Lincolnshire. You may want to call him in to explain in more detail the precise nature of his concerns, but, if it is roughly the same, the next funding round does suggest that we will lose the equivalent number of officers and staff that we lost last time around, which does make it more difficult.

Q3 Chair: But why is crime not therefore going up? Whenever we see the statistics, we have seen reductions in numbers at a local level. People are very concerned about that, and obviously the Police Federation articulates the views of the constables and inspectors, but crime seems to have gone down even though we have fewer police officers on the beat. Why is that?

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is a very good question with a very complicated answer, Chair. The narrative that I prefer is that crime is changing. One must look at the work on which Adrian Leppard is leading as the commissioner of the City of London police with regard to fraud, cybercrime, e-crime—that which is reported and that which is not. I think that crime and demand are changing. If one looks at the huge effort that is now being put, quite properly, into combating child sexual exploitation, for example, and the shift of resources into that, there is a growing pressure of historical inquiries—something of which I have particular experience. The demand on policing is changing. Without question, what we in Northern Ireland would call “ordinary, decent crime”—burglary, car theft and the sorts of crimes that are very important to the citizen—is dropping, and the service can rightly claim some credit for that, although of course science and technology also plays a critical part in reducing opportunities.

              So I think the world is changing. I am also routinely told by chief officers that because of the wider cuts to the public service, for the understandable reasons of the country’s finances, pressure in the uncontrolled space where police are the last responders is increasing, and you will have seen that issues around ambulance support and mental health in particular are still core issues for the service, and we cannot say no.

Q4 Chair: Sure. We have got a report on the criminal justice system and mental health coming out soon.

              You are telling this Committee that Neil Rhodes’s situation is particular to Lincolnshire, but you have heard other chief constables express concern about the effects that the measures have been having.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I am unsighted on the specifics of Lincolnshire, apart from what Neil has said very publicly. The bigger question, Chairman, is one that successive Governments have refused to face up to, which is that the structure of policing is now flawed. Our model is based on the 1962 royal commission, which was before colour television, the internet, e-crime, cybercrime, and the international movement of money and people. We are facing a very different challenge. We are seeing the aggregating up of key national services to a regional level through informal and sometimes quite complex and different arrangements across the country to deal with that. In reality, if we had fewer forces, this would be a lot more straightforward.

Q5 Chair: So you are in favour of mergers.

              Sir Hugh Orde: Only for the last 20 years, Chairman.

Chair: It is good that you are consistent, Sir Hugh. You have taken us on to the new landscape. You talked about the seismic shifts in the policing landscape during your time as president of ACPO. Do you think it has now settled down? Do you think the changes in the landscape are finished, or is there unfinished business that needs to be dealt with?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Policing always has to respond to the changing dynamics around it, so I do not think it will ever be still. The current structure—

Q6 Chair: But it has been more dramatic in the last four years than certainly in the 27 years that I have been in this House. Every single policing body has changed. We have got police and crime commissioners. Bodies have been abolished and created, like the College of Policing. It has never been like this before, has it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think you are right, which is why I described it as seismic, because it is different. The College of Policing—I know Alex Marshall, the chief exec and chief constable, and Shirley are giving evidence later today—is a huge opportunity for policing. I declare an interest. I have been on the first board of directors since they were appointed by the Home Secretary. There is a lot of work to drive what is quite a complicated bit of territory through, and the College is making a huge effort to get that right.

Q7 Chair: It is making an effort, but there seems to be very little achievement. If you go round the Palace, as I have done today, and you talk to police officers, they have not even heard of the College of Policing. There seems to be a big communication problem. They talk about Bramshill—which you will remember, because I would imagine you went through Bramshill—as a class organisation, a brand name for British policing, but at the moment the College of Policing still seems not to have met its expectations. I know it is early days, but there still is a problem with the College. It is not quite there yet.

              Sir Hugh Orde: No; I think that is fair comment.

Q8 Chair: But is that correct?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I think it is. Sadly, we sold Bramshill, which was, as an international brand, hugely strong. Recently I was doing some work in Abuja, and the first senior officer I met proudly showed me his Bramshill tie from 15 years before. It has great credibility, as has British policing, as a model. There are a number of challenges. One is that the College was created, in a way, to fill the gap created by the end of the NPIA, which was a decision by this Government, and of course then there was the realisation that the NPIA did a huge amount of work—better once than 44 times. What we have been trying to do is—

Q9 Chair: So it was created to fill a vacuum at the end of the process, rather than being invented for a specific purpose. Because very few people I have spoken to regard it as being a college.

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is my interpretation of it, and I think that is a reasonable one. That having been said, the opportunity to see the service recognised as a profession with an independent college—that is one of the basic flaws; we are not independent—has huge potential. I do not underestimate the cultural challenge we face, which is around getting colleagues to understand that to be a member of a profession there is an obligation around continuous professional development. You have to keep yourself up to speed to benefit from learning and be supported by the College, but be a critical part of it. That has fitted well, and the work that ACPO used to do, which rightly has gone to the College, has been achieved. That has been seamless and non-problematic.

Q10 Chair: Okay. Are you still surprised, as the Committee was, that the Commissioner is not on the board of ACPO as of right?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The Commissioner is absolutely on the board of ACPO, Chairman.

                            Chair: Sorry; I mean the College.

              Sir Hugh Orde: He is a member of ACPO and I am delighted that he is—and very supportive. As for the College, it goes back to my basic point. We are not independent.

Chair: Give us a yes/no answer, Sir Hugh. You are very good at those. You don’t come before this Committee and flannel in all the years you have been before us.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I take exception to that!

Chair: Do you think that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police should be on the board of the College of Policing as of right?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think that the Metropolitan Police should be represented, and the College has undertaken a huge piece of work, with the support of the appointed—

Q11 Chair: Do you think the Commissioner should be on the board?

              Sir Hugh Orde: It is a matter for the College, Chairman, not me.

Q12 Chair: So the College should decide, not the Home Secretary.

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is the problem, because the first board, of which I am a member, was appointed. I understand why. The board of directors’ view is that the College board is too big and not the right people.

Q13 Chair: Now do you think it should be restructured?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I am sure that Alex and Shirley will update you.

Q14 Chair: What do you think? We want to know what you think.

              Sir Hugh Orde: It is not what I think; it is what the board thinks.

Q15 Chair: You are here to give evidence to the Committee about what you think, not what other witnesses think.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think it should be less.

Q16 Chair: Smaller?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, absolutely. All good practice in the public and private sector tells us that 15 is too big. And they need to be the right people and we need to understand that a board of directors is to get the College to succeed, rather than have a group of people with their own interests.

Q17 Chair: Sir Bernard told this Committee that he felt that there was a body of knowledge in our universities, and that is where he saw training and academic progress being made. He did not say that he thought the lead organisation ought to be the College. He was much more interested. I have noted the number of chief constables who have been to Cambridge to do the MA or the MPhil with Larry Sherman in criminology and some other subject. That is where the Commissioner seemed to be going, rather than saying, “It is called the College of Policing; this is something that the College should be doing,”

              Sir Hugh Orde: The College should and will do more. Indeed, the College commissions services from universities and has continued to do that, to ensure that we have access to those people. I do think the College is the right place for the research undertaken by officers on what works in policing. That is very much part of its objective and it is already doing a lot of work on that.

Q18 Chair: So you see it as an academic body, rather than a body to train police officers.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think it is both. It is bringing together the best research and the best evidence with the best experience and knowledge generated through that experience, to benefit every single member of the service. There is a critical distinction, which has been muddled in the press over many months. The College is inclusive. It is not a leadership organisation; that is ACPO and will be the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

              Chair: That is very helpful; thank you.

Q19 Dr Huppert: I want to pick up on your comment that the board should be smaller. That fits with what you are saying now about how it should work. We have heard from the Police Federation, for example, that they are frustrated that there is only one place on it for federated ranks and so forth. Who would you take off it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The board has done a substantial piece of work, on which I am sure they will update you. At the moment, it is a matter for the Home Secretary. She owns it; it is a company limited by guarantee. There is a little irony in there, Chairman, that you will understand. Until it breaks free of that, we will always have a problem around it being a credible college. The Royal College of Surgeons is not owned by Government, and rightly so. To get to the right place, that is where it needs to be. That is a shared ambition between Government and policing but it is going to take some time to get there.

Q20 Dr Huppert: I take your point about the irony of it being a private company. I have criticised ACPO on that a number of times. I have not yet heard your thoughts on how the board should be constituted.

              Sir Hugh Orde: It should be smaller and, like any board of any organisation, it should be there to provide vigorous challenge and support for the ambition of that institution. For example, there is the huge value of non-executive directors. We need to look at people who are truly independent of policing, who could provide that expertise.

              Particularly in the current climate, someone with a real financial background would be hugely supportive and positive to the College. Of course, parts of the policing profession should be on it but in smaller numbers. The Professional Committee is where the real work of policing goes on and that is where the right professional individuals should be to drive the work forward, rather than run the business.

Q21 Dr Huppert: The only groups that have three people—the others are all one each—are police and crime commissioners, ACPO members and the independent people. Is that where you would trim down the numbers? Or are you saying you would exclude some groups?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I would trim the numbers. I don’t want to steal the thunder of the people following me who have driven this forward with a great degree of energy. The plan is that ACPO has one and the superintendents have one. Those of us who have one, we maintain—it is critical learning for me, having sat on committees of management and such like of companies—that it is the independent element that adds the expertise to drive the College forward. The work will be done by the Professional Committee and that, of course, is the old ACPO Cabinet.

Chair: A quick supplementary question from Nicola Blackwood and then, Mr Ellis, the floor is yours.

Q22 Nicola Blackwood: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Sir Hugh, I want to take you back to your introduction regarding crime rates. The chair said that crime rates were falling. You said that crime rates were changing. In the light of that, do you think that the way we are recording crime is inappropriate for the way that crime is being tackled at the moment?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The short answer—to give you a yes/no answer—is yes, it is inappropriate. Frankly, it is very frustrating, almost bonkers. The police service is moving with partners to deliver outcomes to victims. Yet, at the moment this debate about what is and what is not a crime is taking the debate away from the reality of how we look after and protect victims. There are many examples. Chief officers have explained to me in real frustration that when a frontline officer has taken a decision based on the outcome for the victim, he or she has then been roundly criticised for not recording it as a particular sort of crime. That is frustrating.

Q23 Nicola Blackwood: So is work being done either at the College of Policing  or ACPO to try to propose alternatives?

              Sir Hugh Orde: My sense is that there is no appetite to change the crime reporting rules, which are a matter for the Home Office, not the police. Until they change, the obligation on the profession is to record crime properly. My worry is that we become a recording agency, rather than an investigative agency. You will be reminded, I am sure, of the conversations on the last HMI’s report, where the Chief HMI’s view is that everything should be recorded. If it is then decided some way down the line that it is not a crime—it is no-crimed—corporate memory tells me that we have been here before. Quite properly, to no-crime something requires a huge bureaucracy to make sure that things aren’t being hidden. It is about freeing up the front line and trusting it to make decisions.

Q24 Nicola Blackwood: I accept that it is the Home Office’s job to put the necessary measures in place, but is it not also your job to make representations on behalf of the force? Are any such representations on a properly researched scale being prepared?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Jeff Farrar, who leads for ACPO on crime stats, has articulated the issues on many occasions. It has frequently been raised at the chief constables’ meetings with the Government and Home Secretary. Only today—I believe it was today, if not tomorrow—a number of chief constables are meeting the inspectors of constabulary to discuss this very issue.

Q25 Michael Ellis: Sir Hugh, the crime stats are recorded in exactly the same way today as they have been for many years. That is right, isn’t it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: They change from time to time, but only in minor ways.

Q26 Michael Ellis: The mechanism by which crime statistics are recorded—it is on the record, the Home Secretary has spoken of it—is the same as it was under the previous Government.

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, there is no difference—it is hugely complicated.

Q27 Michael Ellis: It is no different in any material respect. I just want to give credit to the rank-and-file officers in Northampton and elsewhere because crime is down. It is down markedly, isn’t it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: There is no dispute at all, as I said at the beginning, that ordinary decent crime, as we used to call it, has dropped. The issue, though, is what is not recorded: the cyber-crime, the fraud, all those sorts of issues. The world is changing. Quite rightly, as I have said, the service can claim absolutely some of that credit.

Q28 Michael Ellis: That is what I am anxious to see. Where rank-and-file police officers—constables, sergeants and others—have managed to get crime rates down, in some statistical areas by over 10% and 15%, that should be marked and should not be dismissed as a blip in the figures. That is not what you are doing, I take it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is exactly what I wasn’t doing.

Q29 Michael Ellis: The British crime survey, of course is a record of people’s perception, not the actual figures, so it is not a question of statistics as far as the British crime survey is concerned, is it? Those figures also show a marked decline in crime rates, don’t they?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The crime survey is really important, because it is the individual citizen outwith policing saying whether they have or have not been a victim of crime. That tends to track recorded crime but, of course, at a higher level.

Q30 Michael Ellis: And that is also showing a significant downward turn.

              Sir Hugh Orde: It is, yes.

Q31 Michael Ellis: The Chairman mentioned to you before what the Lincolnshire chief constable said. Is it not right that, as well as crime being down, there are more police officers actually on the streets as opposed to in police stations and behind desks? Should we not applaud that as well?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes. It ebbs and flows—it is a very complicated answer to that, and it is different in every single force. Of course, when the first cuts were imposed, because of the rules around police officers’ employment, a number of support staff sadly had to be made redundant. On occasions, to fill the gap in managing that complexity over a period of time, sworn officers were put into jobs which they were frankly overqualified for. But they had to be filled. It is a complicated picture.

Q32 Michael Ellis: With respect, it is not so complicated. The Mayor of London and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, have told this Committee that there are now more officers on the streets in the Metropolitan Police force area—I just choose that are as the largest—than there were four years ago, and that crime rates are down significantly. Do you accept that? I put that in juxtaposition to what your colleague from Lincolnshire said.

              Sir Hugh Orde: In terms of what the Commissioner says, I have no dispute with that at all. Indeed, I was at Hendon only two weeks ago to see 264 new officers passing out. I have to say, the quality was outstanding. I think that that is right, but each force is different. What Neil Rhodes was saying, as I read it, was that he will have to lose another 100 or so officers, or even more, which will put him into a critical place. HMI has said, looking forward at where we are going, that the inevitable impact of similar cuts is that they are more likely to be on the front line this time round, because much of the back-office stuff which you rightly identified has been dealt with.

Q33 Michael Ellis: You presumably accept the need, as a general principle, to balance books and spend within means, either for your own responsible areas or for a Government.

              Sir Hugh Orde: Every chief constable understands that, which is why we have been described as a model public service. We have delivered that, which is why my frustration is the bigger picture. We need to face up to the fact that we have to look at the structure of policing in this country to drive down a lot more costs in a lot more efficient ways.

Q34 Michael Ellis: By “structure of policing”, are you referring to your keenness to amalgamate forces? Is that what you are basically looking to do?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes. In simplistic terms, that is correct. I think that it needs to be an independent review that looks at the totality of policing, so that we maintain neighbourhood policing, which is ever more critical in the current terror situation we face, but also—

Q35 Michael Ellis: I want to ask very briefly about the National Police Chiefs’ Council. How do you think that it will differ from ACPO?

              Sir Hugh Orde: First, a number of the functions that ACPO undertook have now quite properly transferred to the College. All the non-operational work is, in broad terms, no longer the responsibility of ACPO. We managed that very quickly indeed. It will be different in the sense that it is not a company limited by guarantee. It will be hosted with the full support of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the deputy Mayor of London within the Met, but it will not be of the Met. It simply sits in there. That is critical, Chairman. Constitutionally, that needs to be very clearly established.

              Chair: We will have more questions on that, starting with Mr Ian Austin.

Q36 Ian Austin: How do you think the National Police Chiefs’ Council will differ from ACPO?

              Sir Hugh Orde: In addition to those two particular points, it will be delivering exactly the same operational requirement to maintain national co-operation and the delivery of critical national services. For example, how we co-ordinate policing across the 44 forces will be run by my successor, Sara Thornton, at times of crisis and, indeed, in times of pre-planned large operations—for example, the Olympics, the Commonwealth games and those sorts of issues.

Q37 Ian Austin: What arrangements have been made for the transfer of responsibilities from ACPO to the NPCC? Who is going to head the organisation between the time that you stand down and Chief Constable Sara Thornton takes up her post?

              Sir Hugh Orde: We have three vice-presidents in ACPO. Sara is one of them. Sir Peter Fahy and Peter Vaughan from south Wales will manage that. Peter will manage the winding up of ACPO, allowing Sara to focus on the new structure and taking that forward.

Q38 Ian Austin: May I ask one other thing about resources? The College is going to cost £50 million—is that right?

              Sir Hugh Orde: About £80 million—£76 million is, I think, the current figure for this year’s funding. I think it drops by about 9% next year.

Q39 Ian Austin: Right. What observations do you have on that? Is it adequate for the job it has to do?

              Sir Hugh Orde: For the College? Again, I think Alex Marshall is better qualified to answer. Of course, everyone is taking cuts; we have to share that load. Where the College will be different from the NPIA is that, while it will maintain and own the standard and accredit training, it is far more likely that a lot of the training delivered will not be in-house—it will be done by other agencies, and we will inspect the standards. That is where some of the savings may be made. Of course, it is not responsible for IT; that is now the IT company, another company limited by guarantee, owned by the Home Office.

              Chair: We will come on to that later

Q40 Dr Huppert: Picking up on this thing about the NPCC and how it will change, will it be subject to FOI?

              Sir Hugh Orde: You will remember that I gave evidence very early on in my time that I was uncomfortable with ACPO not being included; we fought long and hard to get included and, of course, we were included. I am not sure whether it requires a legislative change, because, in essence, the task is pretty similar, so it may be that the current legislation holds, but the principle will absolutely be that the NPCC will be subject to freedom of information requests.

Q41 Dr Huppert: Excellent. That is very good to hear.

              How do you envisage that the relationship ought to work between the College of Policing organisation, and particularly the chief executive there, and the council?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think it will work in exactly the same way as the relationship currently works between the College and ACPO. It is a professional relationship. We are different. The strength of the landscape is that we have not lost any of the coverage by reorganising ACPO into the NPCC. Anything around policy will be delivered through the Professional Committee of the College of Policing, best practice, evidence-based policing; anything that is operational will go to Chiefs’ Council, which in essence is exactly the same, just chaired by Sara rather than by me.

Q42 Dr Huppert: There was a discussion about whether there should be a full-time chair. The decision has clearly been made to have a full-time chair. Don’t you think that there are concerns with that? What would happen if the chair wanted to take resources from the Met, for example? Who gets decision making in that example?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Well, in extremis, that responsibility currently falls to me. For example, during the riots I was authorised, with the permission of Chiefs’ Council. That does not change—Chiefs’ Council will decide whether the chair of the NPCC has that authority in extremis to manage resources around the country. To date, I am delighted to say that demand has not exceeded supply, so I have never been put in that really difficult position, and we did manage to handle the extreme demand, even during the riots, to cover every request for assistance.

Q43 Dr Huppert: Long may that continue, but with this new role of a full-time chair within the Met, what happens if there is a disagreement between the Met, which may have been outvoted on the Chiefs’ Council, and the chair of the Chiefs’ Council who is, technically, subordinate to them?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Well, that is the constitutional point I raised. I am extremely clear—and this is not about personalities, because Sir Bernard has made it extremely clear too, as has the Mayor’s office for policing—that they are hosting, not commanding the NPCC, so that situation should not arise. It is important that that is very clearly understood, because the perception of it is as worrying as the reality would be if it were the case. It has been made very clear, so hopefully that won’t be a rubbing point.

Q44 Dr Huppert: One final question from me. In your long career, what is your biggest regret—something that you really wanted to achieve but didn’t manage to?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I don’t have any regrets. Policing has been a fantastic career and very challenging. I guess if I have a real regret, it is that we didn’t manage to get to the endgame of terrorism in Northern Ireland, but of course the history of endgames of terrorism across the world is that they are imprecise and imperfect.

Q45 Paul Flynn: As someone who has known and worked with all the chief constables in my area, Gwent, since 1972, all of whom—perhaps 25 in all—were people of the highest ethical standards, it was a profound shock to read Operation Tiberius and to read, in particular, the case of a man from Gwent, Daniel Morgan, who was murdered some 27 years ago. Both reports talk about a world of policing that I never imagined was taking place in modern times. The Daniel Morgan case certainly involves police corruption.

Operation Tiberius paints a picture, rather like Chicago in the ’20s, of collaboration between police and villains to set up crimes, take the proceeds of crime, and to work with people there. All suggested that the link between them was the freemasons. They could not meet in pubs, but they could meet in secret in freemasons’ lodges. Is all of that part of the past, or does it still continue in the Met? It is the code of ethics that I am concerned about. There is a new code of ethics, very different from what the experience in the Met has been for the past 30 years. Is it possible to get rid of the system and change the whole ethos of the Met in a way that would remove corruption?

              Sir Hugh Orde:  I joined the Met in 1977 and served my first 26 years there. What you have described is not the service that I was very proud to be a part of. That is not to say that there was not misconduct; indeed, one only has to read Sir Robert Mark’s book about the corruption that he took on in the early to mid-’70s. His determination to drive corruption out is an example of outstanding police leadership. One always has to be attuned to the fact that there is the potential for corruption, and one has to invest resources in it. I am sure that, if the Commissioner were here, he would be able to articulate the amount of resource that he has put into looking into his own organisation. We need to be very clear: there are, without doubt, corrupt officers in policing around the world, including in this country, who are determined to act in the worst, not the best, interests of the public. They have to be rooted out, and my sense is that there is a clear determination to do that.

              You touched on the masons. I have never been in any masonic lodge and, indeed, I have never been invited to join one. Maybe I was the wrong type of person.

              We had the same situation in Northern Ireland. One of the Patten reforms was that members of, for example, the Orange Order, should declare. There is a certain legal complexity to that, which made it very difficult to get registers that would stand up to scrutiny by the judiciary. That is a complicated area. However, my sense is that this is a better force, without question, than the one that I joined.

Q46 Paul Flynn: I was told that Operation Tiberius is still a secret document. We were shown it under stringent circumstances of secrecy. The picture that it painted was of corruption being endemic in that force. Has it really gone? Would you put your hand on you heart and say that?

              Sir Hugh Orde: In addition, it is worth reading the reports from Transparency International, for example, on levels of corruption within policing. This service comes out very high up the list. That is not to say that there are not issues that we should be dealing with. Indeed, Transparency International has a number of observations around police governance, in particular. I think that it is more balanced than you portray.

Q47 Paul Flynn: Moving to a conflict of a very different order—the question of the police and crime commissioners—a fortnight ago The Sunday Times said that at least half of them had been accused of serious misconduct. There was recently a report from the inspectorate, which accused the Gwent force—you mentioned the chief constable before—of serious underperforming, not preventing reoffending, not reducing crime, not investigating cases of domestic abuse, and so on. I have not seen any response from the police, but there was a vigorous response from the police and crime commissioner saying that there were too many inspections. Whose job is it to defend the police in those circumstances?

Chair: Before you answer that, Sir Hugh, the issue of the number of PCCs under investigation goes beyond Gwent. There are also a large number—too large a number, you may feel—of chief constables who have either been reported to the IPCC or are under investigation. I think that the point that Mr Flynn is making is that although it may not be on Tiberius levels of corruption, there is still a concern about the number of top people in policing who are under investigation. Do you share that concern?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I do, but one of the great strengths of British policing is that it is easy for someone to complain about the police. That is important because transparency is critical. If people have a grievance, that should be properly investigated. It is also important that, until the investigation is complete, we reserve judgment on the guilt or innocence of individuals who are currently under investigation. A number of things have changed. One is the suspension of chief officers. Lincolnshire has been touched on before; in that case, a judge found on judicial review that the suspension had been inappropriate—both perverse and irrational—and ordered the reinstatement of the chief. In others, chief officers remain suspended and under investigation.

Q48 Chair: But you are the leader of ACPO. You are the president. I know you are not responsible for PCCs, though you were a converted fan of PCCs, I think, towards the end, but you are the president of the chief constables and there are a number of complaints about chief constables. What do you do about this? The College of Policing is not responsible for this, but presumably you are.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I can’t be responsible for individual chiefs, and of course anyone can make an allegation against individual chiefs. It is a matter for the police and crime commissioner as to how they progress that. Some have made the decision to suspend; some have not.

              It is worth remembering that throughout history we have been subject to complaints. In fact, I am being interviewed by the police ombudsman next week on a matter from when I was a chief constable. That is right. I was under investigation for very serious allegations for three years of the seven when I was Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

              Chair: Sure.

              Sir Hugh Orde: It is important, Chairman, because both those ombudsman’s investigations—which are a far better system, I would argue, than here—completely exonerated me. The point was that the board chose not to suspend me. They could have done. These are individual choices, and it is right that that structure works.

Q49 Chair: In respect of the code of ethics that the College published in July 2014, it is only a code, is it not? At the end of the day, if people breach that code, who enforces it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: That is a very good question. It is more than only a code. I think it is very important.

Q50 Chair: It is called a code, so it is a code, isn’t it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The country is behind my old police service. We implemented a code of ethics in Northern Ireland eight or nine years ago on the back of the Patten review. It is an important document. It is about how police do business.

Q51 Chair: But who enforces it?

              Sir Hugh Orde: If I may finish, the fundamental difference is that in Northern Ireland it was our discipline code. If you breached the code of ethics, prima facie, there was an investigation. That was the code. We have not connected it in that way. I think that would be a huge step forward.

Q52 Chair: We should do that. This code of ethics, which is at the moment unenforceable, should be reviewed.

              Sir Hugh Orde: It is not unenforceable, because if someone breaks the code, I am sure that they will have—they certainly will have—broken some part of the current disciplinary measures in this country, but it is very complicated. By connecting the two, you make it explicit.

              Chair: Which is what you would like to see done.

              Sir Hugh Orde: The other thing that I would like to see is something else we did. Every single officer in my service had two days’ training on the code, and at the end of those two days, they were handed their own copy, they signed for it and they fully understood how important it was. It has been, of course, a matter for chiefs across the country to implement in different ways.

              Chair: Very helpful indeed, thank you.

Q53 Tim Loughton: May we come back to the resourcing issues on the College, Sir Hugh? The issue of membership subscriptions has been mooted. Can you advise how that compares with ACPO and the financing of ACPO? Do you think that the membership is right?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Just over two years ago, the Home Secretary stopped funding ACPO. Traditionally the Home Office would have funded ACPO 50% and police authorities funded us 50%, which would have been about £1.6 million. Currently we are wholly funded by police and crime commissioners. We have been working very closely with police and crime commissioners on looking forward to an independent committee. That is looking secure for the future.

              ACPO members pay an individual subscription. That will not be part of the new National Police Chiefs’ Council. The costs will fall to be shared among the 43 forces in England and Wales. Currently—it was the Home Secretary’s decision, if I remember correctly—members of the College do not pay to be members for at least three years. My personal view is that until we have to subscribe to the College, it is going to be very difficult to get members to understand what the offer is. As a member of the College, we have to work very hard to get our colleagues at every level—there are 240,000 or so members of this College—to understand what the offer is. If they are going to subscribe, they need to see the value of subscribing. I think then we do two things. We buy our independence, because we are raising more than 51% of our income through subscription, and we also, perhaps, buy our freedom, so that we can be a real college with real standing. That is work in progress. Currently, it is funded by Government.

Q54 Tim Loughton: But the College of Social Work, for example, which is another new college, has been funded by subscriptions right from the start.

              Sir Hugh Orde: And indeed the Royal College of Nursing changed decades ago to that system, and it was a very difficult change. I speak with some experience—my mother was a nurse during that time. People become very interested when they are making a contribution to something. I think that is the vision, I just think it is just some time off.

Q55 Tim Loughton: Also, ACPO gets its funding from effectively selling guidance to individual constabularies. Is that not the case?

              Sir Hugh Orde: No, that is flawed at every level. The work to develop guidance and policy now rests entirely with the College. That has already gone over. The College now drives it.

Q56 Tim Loughton: But ACPO did sell guidance to individual concerns.

              Sir Hugh Orde: No, we did not. The way guidance was developed before was through what we called ACPO Cabinet, which I chaired, and national business area leads, who were serving chief constables. For example, Jon Murphy is chief constable of crime—no, he is not chief constable of crime, he will not forgive me for that—he is chief constable of Merseyside, where crime is very low, but he leads on all crime matters. So if they were developing, for example, the next detective training, he would lead that work and would then take it to Chiefs’ Council, the chiefs would agree it and sign it off. But no money changed hands. What happens now is that that work, quite properly, rests with the College Professional Committee, and the College would drive it forward. But the work cannot just be done in the College—it does not have the resources. The College will rely on all chief constables contributing to that work to develop the best possible practice. That will continue.

Q57 Tim Loughton: I’m a bit confused here. My understanding was that on something like police information notices, of which I have had some experience, individual constabularies would subscribe to ACPO for guidance on how you operate PINs. They can update their guidance every so often and tailor it locally. I was under the impression that in order to get that expert guidance, which is effectively ACPO’s interpretation of what the law should be and how it should work in practice, a subscription was effectively paid by local constabularies to get that advice.

              Sir Hugh Orde: If there is an issue—indeed, most ACPO work is developed in this way—it is far better dealt with once than 44 times. Chief constables have on occasions, for example, worked through the freedom of information unit, which you may be referring to. If it is something to do with FOI, chief officers contribute to that to have one unit that they can all draw from, but they have to fund it, because we have no money. So there is one central resource. That does two things: first, it ensures consistency, and secondly it ensures availability across the piece. That is a well worked system. All chief officers contribute an amount to the running of the ACPO criminal records office, for example, but so does the Home Office. That money is drawn from a number of places; likewise the national computer.

Q58 Tim Loughton: So they do subscribe in some shape or form. I am just asking, should the same model translate to the College? Effectively, that is another important source of funding for the College on top of, potentially, a membership subscription at an appropriate time, as you said.

              Sir Hugh Orde: I don’t think that works, because the College is developing essentially non-operational work—it is policy, procedure, best practice, evidence-based policing. These are not things that I think we can charge for. The operational matters are normally the ones where it is realised that having national or sub-national regional structures is more effective. Those are the ones that tend to be discussed at Chiefs’ Council. I think one or two are being discussed at the next Chiefs’ Council in January, for example how we fund the work undertaken by Simon Bailey on CSE, because that is across all forces. So I think there is a distinction there.

Q59 Mr Winnick: Sir Hugh, I wonder if I could ask you your views on what the chief constable of Greater Manchester has said. His concern is that the battle, as he describes it, against extremism, could lead—he uses a rather dramatic expression—to a drift towards a police state. What he means by that, as you know, is that it will be the police in some circumstances who will have to define what is extremism. Do you have any comments on that?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I think Sir Peter’s point is that that would not be the right way to go. It is a matter for Government to describe or define what is and what is not extremism. I do not disagree with that at all. It was a broad piece which, rather like Chief Constable Rhodes, took me slightly by surprise too, Chairman. I have been very surprised this week.

              There is a broader issue that you rightly identify, which is the new challenges to policing around terrorism and extremism emanating from communities in a very different way from that which, for example, routinely the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross would have dealt with in terms of the IRA.

              This is individual actors who are far more likely to be identified by communities than by the police or the intelligence services, and the importance of maintaining that critical relationship between the citizen and the police, so we get the trust to give us that information. Anything that detracts from that is problematic. A number of issues have been raised recently, for example, in relation to sentencing of individuals who are exposed by their own families. How you manage that is a huge challenge for policing. Peter’s article broadly touched on that whole spectrum.

Q60 Mr Winnick: Yes, because he gives an illustration of where police were called to a demonstration involving Israel and Palestine. The police, to a certain extent, had to decide who were the extremists: the pro-Israelis or the pro-Palestinians? Some might say both, or neither; my view would be neither. Be that as it may, it presents problems. He also gives illustrations about academic life. Who are going to be described as the extremists who the universities, according to the legislation, should not allow on campuses? He thinks that is the job of politicians, not the police.

              Sir Hugh Orde: You are describing the complexity of policing and how often the police service finds itself in the middle. That was my experience in Northern Ireland; we were so frequently in the middle, and then of course both sides turn on the police. That’s the problem, because in my experience the way of resolving that is through relentlessly talking to both sides, having quiet conversations, and getting people to make leaps of faith to have those difficult conversations to prevent this from happening. It just shows how complex policing has become and I have to say, Chairman, that it is different from when I joined in 1977; it is far more complicated.

Q61 Mr Winnick: I wonder if I may ask you a different question. I am not asking you for one moment to criticise the court and the sentence given, but there has been much attention given to the mother who reported her son. Everyone has congratulated her; he had gone to Syria and then returned. She says, as you know, because it has been so widely reported, that she feels betrayed; she didn’t expect that charges would be made and certainly didn’t expect the heavy sentence given. The judge, of course, acted according to law. Be that as it may, do you feel that could be a discouragement when we ask people—I deliberately use the word “we”, to mean not just Parliament but society as a whole, including Muslims of course—to let the police know of such circumstances, where people’s children could be radicalised to such an extent that they want to go and fight for groups that we know are totally inappropriate?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Thank you for what can only be described as a hospital pass. I am very mindful of the Constitutional Affairs Act and the independence of judges, which I fully respect. The point you make is a really important one. There was a very good piece in The Times last week from—I have forgotten now which Lord it was by, but it will come to me. I think it was Lord Pannick. It was on exactly that point about proportionality and the wider picture. Of course, when someone is being sentenced it tends to be that that event is looked at, to some extent, outwith the broader picture. And the learning here, and there is a lot of learning in Northern Ireland, is that the biggest recruiters of terrorism in the past were, for example, internment, where people perceived a process that was not fair or right or legal, and it became a great attraction for people to join the Provisional IRA, for example. What we must do is make sure we get this difficult, difficult balance right.

Q62 Mr Winnick: Do you think we are getting the balance right, because as far as the IRA were concerned all the evidence showed that the attempts of the IRA to gather in the Irish population in places such as Birmingham, near my constituency, and certainly in London failed, because the large Irish community had, yes, sympathy for all the injustice in Northern Ireland, but in the main they certainly didn’t have it for carrying out acts of outright terrorism and mass murder? Do you think we are getting the balance right as far as dealing with Islamic murderous threats is concerned?

              Sir Hugh Orde: As I said, this is a very different situation. Of course, that is why community trust and confidence is far more important in a way now than it ever has been, because there is clear evidence that individuals who are becoming radicalised are far more likely to be identified within their communities. We then have got to have that trust to allow those people in those communities to step forward and tell us, and believe they will be treated fairly and in accordance with the law. I couldn’t agree more with that; I think we are arguing on the same point.

              The balance is a tricky one, and each case will have to be very much looked at on its merits. Indeed, on occasions it may be that the harder edge of enforcement is not the right approach; it may be a softer approach. Some of the Scandinavian countries, for example, treat people who are coming back in a way that tries to get them back and reintegrated into the community, rather than actually criminalising them and taking them out of circulation.

Q63 Chair: Thank you; that is very helpful. Finally, back to the College of Policing. You said that there was a feeling that people on work experience were taking high-risk decisions, I think in reference to direct entry schemes. I want to ask you about the new rules being published by the College, and already reported in the public domain, about the relaxation regarding previous convictions and cautions in order to recruit more officers. There is no question that people are not applying to be officers. What do you think of that change, which we understand is going to be made by the College of Policing? Do you think it is a good idea to relax those rules?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Well, they are different issues.

              Chair: They are.

              Sir Hugh Orde: Direct entry at senior level has taken place. As I have said—I stand by my observations—the complexity of the task of a superintendent is such that, as I said, in my world, I would not have been recruiting, but 888 thought they would want to be direct entry superintendents. Of those, 46 went to an extended interview process run by the College, of which 13 were recommended to forces, but I think only about nine have taken up positions. They are now being progressed through the system, and we will see how that goes.

Q64 Chair: The jury is out on that?

              Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I think it is. I had the privilege of meeting the five in London a couple of weeks ago. They were certainly very enthusiastic, keen and able people, and our role is to make sure they are now fully trained and brought up to speed as quickly as possible so they can make those difficult decisions.

Q65 Chair: And in relation to the relaxation of the rules?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I think that is more difficult, Chairman. My personal view—well.

Q66 Chair: Give us your personal view, then.

              Sir Hugh Orde: My personal view is that I would not be looking to recruit people with criminal convictions on joining, because of the complexity of using those individuals in the broader role of policing. It would be absolutely disclosable, and rightly so. If someone were put into the evidential chain, the first thing they would have to do would be to declare they have a previous conviction, possibly even for the same offence for which they are prosecuting someone, and I think that is difficult. Of course, I am mindful of the fact that a number of officers who have received convictions post-employment remain in the job.

Q67 Chair: Indeed. That is very clear, and we are grateful for your personal view. There are two other quick issues, and then Mr Huppert has a supplementary to end. We published a report concerning Sir Cliff Richard, on the media and the police. I don’t know whether you saw it. In all the years that you have been in policing, I have never known of an incident concerning any of your forces—it may have happened, but I don’t know of it—in which information was leaked to the media. Are you strongly of the view that police should not be informing the media about issues concerning investigations, or have you mellowed? Is that your view?

              Sir Hugh Orde: The media are hugely important to police investigations. Properly handled, there should be that relationship. There is very little in policing, frankly, that needs to be secret. That is not my observation; it was actually the observation of Robert Mark when he left.

Q68 Chair: What about a raid on someone’s house?

              Sir Hugh Orde: In that sort of situation—the chief constable has fully accepted that that was clumsily done or could have been done better, and I think he is entirely right. There is a certain irony, Chairman. When I was in the Met, I ran a long-running inquiry which was very sensitive. We chose, quite properly in my judgment, that certain high-profile names should absolutely not be named, because there was no proper reason or evidential basis for doing so. Along with some other senior officers, I am currently being criticised for that. It is always difficult. At one end, clearly people should not be named in those circumstances, but at the other end, we are increasingly under pressure to name people, and I think that on occasion we absolutely must resist. It would be grossly inappropriate to ruin people’s lives on mere speculation.

Q69 Chair: You are on record as being not in favour of deploying water cannons. Is that still the case?

              Sir Hugh Orde: No, I am not on record as saying I am against water cannons.

Q70 Chair: Are you in favour of water cannons?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I have deployed water cannons. That makes me unique in the United Kingdom as a serving chief. I gave evidence to the London Councils on that particular point, and I described what they are capable of. The tactic simply buys distance. It is quite right that in anticipation of some authority at some stage, ACPO is looking at national guidelines. I think that makes absolute sense, and of course the college is now—

Q71 Chair: So you don’t have a problem with water cannons?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I have no problem with any tactic. The issue is when you use it. There may be a deterrent value to the Metropolitan Police if people who are planning to cause serious disruption know that this may be deployed against them. The basic principles of deployment are always the same: minimum use of force and minimum intervention in the rights of citizens. The only thing a water cannon does is buy you distance, so in tight and confined areas it is not a particularly useful machine. You need three to hold one position, for example: one has to fill up, one has to hold position and one has to go to and fro to get the water.

Q72 Chair: Right. We have been concerned that the Metropolitan Police have purchased water cannons.

Sir Hugh Orde: That is entirely a matter for the Metropolitan Police.

Q73 Chair: I know that; I am asking about the process. Having purchased them, they have now been waiting nine months for the go-ahead from the Home Secretary to use them. Is that a normal period of time, or is that exceptional?

              Sir Hugh Orde: I would have said it was exceptional. There is no more information that, in my judgment, the Home Secretary needs to make that decision. The decision is now a precise one. I think the view is London are asking for permission. Other chiefs, currently, are not; so that could take place, in my judgment. That does not mean, of course, that the Commissioner would go out and use them. I am sure he would be determined not to use them; but having that capacity may mean he has to use something less lethal than some of the other tactics which are currently authorised.

Q74 Chair: Well, with your experience I am sure he will ring you first and ask what he should do. Now, Sir Hugh, this may be the last time you appear before this Committee, depending on—

              Sir Hugh Orde: Is that a promise, Chairman?

Chair: You have now done 37 years in policing, and you have held practically every job of importance in British policing. I just wanted to thank you, on behalf of this Committee, for the incredible work that you have done for British policing. You are the ultimate police officer, in the sense that we ask you a question and you give us an answer. There is no flannelling; there are no grey areas. There is black and white, and we appreciate that greatly, and that is why you are so hugely respected by so many members of the police force. I am not sure what is next for Sir Hugh Orde—whether you will go off to become an adviser to the King of Bahrain, like some of your predecessors; but whatever you do and wherever you go, this Home Affairs Committee thanks you for the work that you have done, not just in Northern Ireland but in the other forces; in the presidency of ACPO, where you have always been very willing to come before us and give evidence; and for your candid and very open and transparent approach to Parliament. We wish you the best of luck for the future.

              Sir Hugh Orde: Thank you Chairman; that is most generous of you.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Steve White, Chairman, and Andy Fittes, General Secretary, Police Federation of England and Wales, gave evidence.

Q75 Chair: Mr White, Mr Fittes, thank you very much for coming to talk to us about the College of Policing. The role of the Police Federation in the College is of course extremely important, because it is all about training and getting people ready for policing. However, in the research that I have done by going round the Palace, by talking to some of your members, there seems to be a complete lack of knowledge as to what the College of Policing is or does. If you were at this stage—and we know it is early days; it has only been in existence for two years, whereas Bramshill and other organisations have been there for a long time—how would you mark it out of 10, Mr White?

              Steve White: Goodness, me. I think in terms of effort you are probably looking at an 8. In terms of outcomes you are probably looking at a 6.

Q76 Chair: Why is that? That is the impression I get from talking to people, and, certainly, we did not get an absolute endorsement from Sir Hugh just now. He raised a number of concerns about governance. What is going wrong with the College? What would you like to put right?

              Steve White: I do not think it is so much what is going wrong with it. It is just that it is such a complex area to move from the NPIA to the concept of having a college. A lot of the time I think it is about mindset. You alluded to the knowledge around our members—exactly what the College of Policing is, and how is it going to affect them on a day-to-day basis. I think it is fair to say that probably the vast majority of officers have seen the College of Policing logo, when they have been doing some kind of branded training; but in terms of the concept of what the College wants to become, that has not been sold to the membership; and to be brutally frank officers hardly have a spare minute to think about things anyway, when they are on duty. Of course, backed with a reducing ability for forces to provide training for officers, because of reduced budgets, I think that ability to actually engage with the officers, around what the College of Policing is aspiring to do, is difficult. So it is not a case of blaming the College for where we are. It is a recognition that the time lines that they are working to are very challenging and it is going to take time to bed in.

Chair: Do they come out to you? Do they speak to the Federation and say, “Look, you represent thousands and thousands of officers—130,000 officers, and those who want to become officers”? How much time have they spent with yourselves talking about what should be in the training schedule and how you think it should be improved?

              Steve White: The College of Policing and the Police Federation have a very strong relationship. I think it is fair to say that, at the start of the concept of the College of Policing, we had reservations. We now work very closely with the College. You know that we have a member who is a director.

Q77 Chair: Should you have more than one? You seem to have one member sitting on this board. We have heard that Sir Hugh thinks it is unwieldy, so one may be enough, but is it enough when the vast majority of people who are going to go through the College will join as constables?

              Steve White: I think Sir Hugh made an interesting observation on the Professional Committee, which is where the detailed work is done. We have significant representation on that committee. Andy sits on the committee and provides advice and guidance. In terms of the directorship, the important thing is that our 124,000 members, whom we are here to represent, have an effective voice in the running of the College. I think it is fair to say that at first, when the College was being set up, we had reservations about effectively being completely outnumbered, but having said that, the voice of our current representative, Julia, is very effective and is listened to. What we need to ensure is that that voice continues, whatever the new board looks like. If the numbers are reduced, we need to ensure that we still have influence.

Q78 Chair: Mr Fittes, I was speaking to a police and crime commissioner who is a former chief constable. They talked about the years and years of training that go into becoming a police officer and how that has been reduced since the College began its work. Are you satisfied that there is enough quality going into the training of new officers, particularly regarding the certificate of policing, which one of our colleagues has referred to as the “bobby tax”? Do you think it is actually fit for purpose? Does it provide people with the certification necessary to be a police officer?

              Andy Fittes: I think that certificate needs to be looked at. If we are going to attract the right people into policing for the future, it is something that needs to be developed. I know the College and the Professional Committee have discussed ways forward on that.

Q79 Chair: What is wrong with it at the moment? What is practically wrong with the certificate?

              Andy Fittes: As a theoretical test, it doesn’t assess people properly for what they are needed to do. We have done some work with the College on the possible presence of unconscious bias. I know these things are being looked at, so I think it can be developed into a far better tool. The College is working very hard on this, and we support that work. I would give them a slightly higher mark that Steve did, because I see a lot of the work that occurs within the business areas. The quality of the work being produced is very good. I agree with Steve that some of the issues arise with delivery. Officers don’t have time to do the training that is being offered or is available to them.

Q80 Chair: It seems that the rules governing the admission of officers are going to be relaxed slightly so that people with minor convictions are going to be allowed to join the police force. We understand that that is something that is coming out of the College next year. We will ask Mr Marshall about it, of course. What do you feel about it?

              Andy Fittes: My personal view is that I don’t think officers, or potential officers, should be allowed in with convictions.

              Chair: Mr White?

              Steve White: As an organisation, we have grave concerns in relation to that. We were talking earlier, in relation to the code, about a code of ethics. I think it would be a very dangerous road to go down. The relaxing of standards is not something that we should be looking at, and it is not something that we would support.

Q81 Chair: Finally from me, on BAME members, one of the reasons why the College was set up was to increase diversity. That’s what the Home Secretary said. What is the Federation doing to try to encourage more black and Asian people to join the force? I know that is not primarily your job, but are you doing much to ensure that it happens? When I went to the Police Federation conference last year, I didn’t see very many black and Asian full-time officials in the Federation. That is an issue of concern, isn’t it?

              Steve White: You are absolutely right. One of the key recommendations for the reform of the PFEW is that we have a lead in relation to equality and diversity. We recognise that. Likewise, we recognise that the police service, as a whole, needs to change and adapt. We will help wherever we can. It is about getting into the communities and giving them the confidence to come forward and apply to the service.

Q82 Chair: Are you on track with your reforms?

              Steve White: Absolutely.

Q83 Paul Flynn: When the ethics code becomes firmly established, do you expect to see a reduction in the number of complaints against police constables and police and crime commissioners?

              Steve White: That is an interesting question. Clearly you have got to have a system in place that people have trust in, and you might say that if people had more trust in it, then you could see an increase in the number of complaints. Probably the measure should be about what complaints are upheld at the end of the process. More often than not, when police officers are dealing with people—when arresting them—those people do not like being arrested, so it generates a lot of complaints. The important thing of course is that police officers act professionally and adhere to the code while doing that. The code of conduct is pretty clear about officers transgressing the line in terms of conduct. The code of ethics is more of a mindset, and that will take a while to bed in. So, without wishing to sound as if I am fudging the question, one would hope that an increase in standards will reduce the number of complaints in the long term.

Q84 Paul Flynn: But is the code of conduct going to do the job? Is it a watchdog, a rottweiler or a pussycat without teeth or claws?

              Steve White: The code of conduct is very comprehensive. Police officers are quite rightly held to account in relation to the code of conduct. Now we have the code of ethics, which is a bolt-on to that, and it is extremely important. It is something that the Police Federation of England and Wales has adopted in its entirety. Every police officer in the country now has to adhere to it, and quite rightly so.

Q85 Mr Winnick: A much fought-against change was when black people first went into the police force. We had horrifying stories in the media about what happened 25 or 30 years ago. As I say, all the indications are that some hopefully substantial improvements have occurred. Can you tell me, gentlemen, what happens if it comes to the attention of the Police Federation that some members have engaged in racist talk, sexist talk and so on? Is it considered, “Well, that’s private conversation, nothing to do with the Police Federation”, or do you take action?

              Andy Fittes: That kind of behaviour is absolutely unacceptable wherever it happens. We are going through a transformational process, we are a professional organisation and we want to put that on a firm footing. For me as general secretary, part of my role is to develop that governance structure—we will not accept such behaviour and we will deal with it. At the moment there are some issues around that, because we do not have an internal code of conduct. It involves us, when we discover any behaviour that we feel has breached the code of conduct, referring it back to the member’s force, so that the force will deal with it internally. We can get better at dealing with that, but it is definitely unacceptable behaviour.

Q86 Mr Winnick: If we take the past two or three years—we will not go back further, or at least I will not go back further—how many disciplinary cases have you dealt with relating particularly and only to racist and sexist remarks and accusations of such remarks being made?

              Andy Fittes: I have been a Federation representative since 1999. I have only been general secretary since May. Before that, I was a representative who looked after members who fell foul of misconduct matters, so probably, in my personal experience, two to three cases had elements of that as part of the misconduct process. That is on a personal basis. Obviously, we see—

Q87 Mr Winnick: Perhaps Mr White could help.

              Steve White: Are you referring just to Federation representatives, or to membership of the Federation as a whole?

Mr Winnick: That is a good question. I was really referring to the Federation as a whole.

              Steve White: In my personal experience, none at all. In my personal experience, I have not come across—

Chair: Sorry, will you repeat that?

              Steve White: In my personal experience, I have not come across any cases at all of the nature you described.

Q88 Michael Ellis: A survey of members of the Police Federation, rank-and-file officers, not that long ago indicated that vast numbers—over 90%, if I remember correctly—were dissatisfied with the Police Federation that was representing them. Do you have any reason to believe that those figures would improve if those constables and sergeants that you represent were polled about it now?

              Steve White: I would certainly like to think so. We have come a long way in the past six months since our Federation conference in May. We have adopted the principle of the 36 recommendations of the Normington review in order to change the organisation for the better.

Q89 Chair: What about actually adopting them, rather than the principle of them?

              Steve White: Some of the recommendations we have already started to adopt. Indeed, there is a process of regulatory reform that is starting in February and in April next year, which requires the Home Secretary to sign off to put that on a firm footing. The interesting thing about the Federation at the moment is that we are highly regulated. It might be that in future we become completely deregulated, but there is not an appetite for Government to do that at the moment. Because of the regulations, for us to change the structure of the organisation we have to get the regulations changed. You are absolutely right to point this out, and we recognised ourselves that as an organisation we were failing in some respects towards our members. One of the biggest areas was communication with our members. That is something that part of the review process will change. We are adopting some of the reforms to enable that to happen at a rate of knots.

Q90 Michael Ellis: Good. So you agree with the Normington recommendations, do you? These are 36 recommendations that you accept, and it is just a question of implementing them—is that a fair characterisation of your position?

              Steve White: There is detail around each of the recommendations. The report went to nearly 90 pages, but there is quite a lot of detail that needs to be worked through, which is why we have engaged an expert external company, Accenture, to help us through those processes and to do the work. In terms of the 36 recommendations, there was a clear mandate at conference for us to adopt them and we are working hard to do that, but it will take a bit of time.

Q91 Michael Ellis: What about changing the mechanism by which the rank and file pay their dues to the Police Federation? That is a subject of some controversy as well, is it not? The constables I have spoken to have raised with me the fact that they feel almost obliged to pay dues to the Police Federation, because they would be in difficulties if they did not. It has led to vast, enormous reserves of money being available at the Police Federation’s disposal, has it not? We went through all of this some months ago in this Committee. There are huge sums—tens of millions of pounds—sitting in bank accounts, in “No. 2” accounts or whatever they were euphemistically called. Do you think that that is something that you should be looking at—the mechanisms by which the rank and file pay their dues?

              Andy Fittes: We definitely have to change how we process the money. It is a system that has not changed a great deal since the Federation was formed. The review tells us how to do that, and we will do it. As I said, I was with the Home Office yesterday, and I sent draft regulatory change that will enable that to happen. I have promised the Home Office that by April next year, I will deliver a full package of financial change and structural change to the organisation. That will deliver, within regulations, the openness and transparency that we need to reassure people on how their money is being treated and that it is being treated for the proper purposes.

Q92 Michael Ellis: That is reassuring. Do you think that the Police Federation is fairly characterised as a very litigious organisation, in that it has recourse to law on frequent occasion? Do you think that that would be a fair characterisation? Do you spend a lot of money on lawyers?

              Andy Fittes: Our legal bill is high. For last year, it was around £9 million. It is a large chunk of our expenditure. That is the environment. We are a staff association. We look after members who work within a legal environment. When they need representation, whether it is related to criminal law, civil law or the police conduct regulations, that will cost money, because it is a legal process.

Q93 Michael Ellis: I, for one, would want you to do that. It is part of your function to look after your members, but £9 million per annum as a legal bill is enormous, is it not? Even bearing in mind what you say, is that not something that you could be looking at?

              Andy Fittes: I would like it to be smaller.

Q94 Michael Ellis: Is it your highest category of spend? Is there anything that you spend more money on than lawyers at the moment—not that lawyers are necessarily an improper thing to spend money on, I hasten to add? I express an interest, as I was a barrister in practice, although not any more. The serious point is that it is a lot of your members’ money that you are spending in that way.

              Andy Fittes: It is not just legal bills around defending members; there are also the legal processes on regulatory change. We seek legal advice on a lot of matters, and that is expensive.

Q95 Chair: Thank you. I assure you that Mr Ellis is not looking for work in declaring his interest. But the point is this: you say it is a big bill, but you authorised the payments in, for example, the Andrew Mitchell case. You decided that you would support your members—or your member, in that case—did you not?

              Steve White: Yes, absolutely. It was absolutely the right thing to do. It is worth pointing out—clearly legal processes are still ongoing in that case—that we made every effort to avoid that case getting to court.

Q96 Chair: Yes. Do you think that the College has enough resources? One concern that we have in the report that we are doing on the College is that its two years are up in February. We are also looking at the rest of the landscape of policing, but in not quite as much detail as the College, because we are more interested in the College than in the other bits. We have done the NCA. Do you think it has enough money? The NPIA seemed to be very well resourced, but the College does not. It seems to be a case of “Let them sell their brand abroad, or wherever, in order to raise their money.” Do you think that is a good start for an organisation that everyone supports?

              Steve White: You probably won’t be surprised to hear from me, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, that no, I don’t think they do have sufficient resources, but then again, I don’t think a single force in the country has sufficient resources at the moment. We are up against a fiscal issue that we are having to grapple with.

Q97 Chair: Sure, but we are all suffering. Not “we”; you are suffering with your cuts. Indeed, Parliament itself was having to make cuts during this period. Do you think that because of the expectations—the Home Secretary had great expectations for the College, and this Committee has great expectations—we should have resourced the College better at the start, rather than leaving it in a position where it does not have sufficient money? If you do, what should the money be spent on?

              Steve White: One of the areas in police training that certainly frustrates our members hugely is online training. We have seen a reduction in the number of staff training days, so instead of getting one-to-one training in an interactive session with a trainer, we are seeing an increased use of online packages. I have to say—

Q98 Chair: That is a real problem, isn’t it? I refer to the former chief constable who said to me, “In the old days you could get better training, face-to-face training.” If the PCSOs and constables are not going out with the trainees and they have to go online when dealing with the College of Policing, it’s a problem, isn’t it, to get people trained?

              Steve White: Yes, and it is one of the ways that the College of Policing are trying to get the best bang for their buck in the delivery of training. I have to say that the quality of that online training has actually improved significantly over the years that it has been available. Having said that, officers do find it hugely frustrating, but the other thing that they find—

Q99 Chair: It should be face-to-face, shouldn’t it, because you will be dealing with the public?

              Steve White: In an ideal world, yes, of course, and it should be done on a group basis so that you can interact and learn from each other, but of course the other frustrating thing for our officers is finding the time to do the training. It is all very well to have a wonderful online package, but then you have to ensure that you have the ability to actually sit down and pay attention to it in a constructive way, as opposed to in between calls, meal breaks or whatever. Of course, there is a cost implication to that, and it all adds up.

Q100 Chair: Mr Fittes, how long was your training before you became a full-time general secretary?

              Andy Fittes: I cannot beat Sir Hugh; it has been 27 years since I joined the police. My training was five months.

              Chair: No, you certainly can’t beat Sir Hugh.

              Andy Fittes: I had five months’ residential training at Hendon.

              Chair: Five months at Hendon?

              Andy Fittes: Yes. And then, obviously, part of my two-year probation period after that.

              Chair: So it was five months’ training and then probation for two years.

              Andy Fittes: That is what I did. You don’t do that any more.

Q101 Chair: Right. Mr White—the same?

              Steve White: It’s interesting, isn’t it? It depends on how you specialise, as well. You have your basic level of training, like Andy’s, where it is three months’ residential and two years on the job, but then of course, if you train to become a sergeant or inspector and do the qualifications required for that, or if you specialise in road policing and firearms, as I did, then there is a significant amount of training. I have never tried to add it all up, but I should think a significant amount of my 26 years has been spent in training. I have to say that the last time I did any training, it was purely for a Federation course. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to.

Q102 Chair: Do you do your own courses at your headquarters, which the Committee has visited?

              Steve White: Absolutely—modular courses.

Q103 Chair: Why do you do your own courses and provide extra support?

              Steve White: It is interesting, isn’t it? We have seen an increase in uptake from our representatives around the country wanting to come to training courses at Federation House, because forces no longer provide a lot of training. For example, training in media handling used to be provided regularly at supervisory level within forces. It doesn’t happen any more, but we still provide it for our representatives. We have to make sure that our representatives are trained to do the job that they are required to do.

Q104 Chair: Because it is not being provided anywhere else?

              Steve White: Absolutely, yes.

Q105 Nicola Blackwood: I just want to follow up on some of your discussion with Mr Ellis about legal fees, because I didn’t quite follow it. What is your overall budget? Not for legal fees, just overall.

              Steve White: For the Police Federation of England and Wales?

Q106 Nicola Blackwood: Yes.

              Steve White: In terms of us as a body, it is in the region of £24 million a year.

Q107 Nicola Blackwood: And how much would you say that you have spent on legal fees this year?

              Steve White: As Andy alluded to earlier, it is about £9 million. Over the past few years, despite there being a decrease in the membership of 16,000 and a decrease in the costs of the organisation, we have actually seen a higher proportion of members’ subscriptions being spent on legal fees, which is the right thing that we should be doing. We are spending less on everything else and more on legal fees to support our members.

Q108 Nicola Blackwood: Just as an example to give us a sense of how much you might spend on a case, how much was spent on the Andrew Mitchell case defence?

              Steve White: I think that the cost schedule for our expenditure to date was in the region of £938,000.

Q109 Nicola Blackwood: I want to follow up on your answer to Mr Winnick about the bullying allegations, about which we obviously heard as part of our previous inquiry. You have made the statement that you are not aware of any incidents of that kind, but you have also been discussing the code of ethics and the code of conduct that has come down from the College of Policing. What is the Police Federation doing to embed that within the Federation? Do you do specific work and training within your own teams?

              Steve White: Yes, absolutely. In fact, since conference in May we have rolled out anti-bullying workshops throughout headquarters. Every single member of staff and representative has gone through that training and we have just got to the end of it, if my memory serves.

              Andy Fittes: Yes, and also the code of ethics will become incorporated into the code of conduct in the opening chapter. We do a course on misconduct and the code of conduct for our representatives, so they will obviously start to learn the code of ethics as part of that—in fact, it is the first thing that they do.

Q110 Michael Ellis: Gentlemen, I have a couple of questions. Do you think that members of the Police Federation should be prepared to pay for membership of the College of Policing? How is the College going to find alternative sources of revenue?

              Steve White: I think—in fact, I know—that there would be huge resistance if officers who are facing massive issues in relation to their pay and conditions were asked to fork out extra money in order to continue to do their role. As a matter of principle, we are very glad that the College of Policing has recently said that for the next three years basic membership will be free of charge. The College of Policing needs to provide the tools and the training for officers to do their job.

Q111 Michael Ellis: Someone’s got to pay for it.

              Steve White: But the public demand and expect that to be the case, and I think that the public would also expect officers to be trained as part of the role.

Q112 Michael Ellis: Do you think that perhaps the dues that come to the Police Federation, which have amounted to tens of millions in the Police Federation’s bank accounts, could go down a little, thereby also helping police constables and sergeants with the money that comes out of their wage packets?

              Andy Fittes: The recommendation in the review talks about exactly that—giving something back to the members—and that is something that we have to deal with. I think that benefit to the Members is a good idea.

              On your original question about the College and subscription fees, as the Chair previously mentioned, if you speak to a lot of officers, they do not know that the College exists. In order to win over those officers, the College has to sell benefit: an officer on the street has to think, “This is going to help me in my career” before you can introduce the idea of having to pay for something.

Q113 Michael Ellis: I have one other question on a totally different subject: police uniforms. I think that the Police Federation takes an interest in uniforms—it is part of the myriad of responsibilities. In some jurisdictions in the United States there is a concern that police uniforms have become quasi-militarised, and there are one or two in this country who feel that uniforms have changed, particularly outside of the Metropolitan Police, which has maintained more of a traditional uniform look. Do you wish to make any observations about police uniforms in this country?

              Steve White: I have a couple of observations. First and foremost, the uniform must be practical—it has to be fit for purpose. To be brutally frank, the traditional image of the British bobby in a tunic with the traditional helmet might look nice but it is not entirely practical. Having said that, I have been a police officer for 26 years, and I think that for all those 26 years we have been talking about having a national police uniform, which we would certainly encourage. There has never been agreement—you have 43 different trousers, 43 different shirts, 43 different helmets, which seems to be nonsense. I think there is room to standardise stuff, but it has to be fit for purpose. The other thing is that policing has developed, and expertise has developed within policing. What is practical for one role is not necessarily practical for another.

Q114 Michael Ellis: No, and I appreciate that for specialist roles, there will always be differences in uniform. I think you are absolutely right about the 43 different purchases of trousers, or whatever it is. I am sure that some substantial cost savings can be made there, if they are not already. In terms of the militarisation, almost—the look of the uniform becoming quasi-military in some aspects, certainly in some constabulary areas—do you agree with that concern? Or do you think that that is misguided?

              Andy Fittes: Although I would agree with Steve that uniform has to be practical and functional, I am a Metropolitan Police officer and I like our uniform—

              Michael Ellis: So do many of your colleagues.

              Andy Fittes: Yes. There is a thing around: we cannot stop the public engaging with us, and there is this image thing where if you look too much like a paramilitary enforcement officer, people will stop talking to you. We have to be really careful that we do not go too far down that road.

Q115 Tim Loughton: May I come back to what Mr Ellis was saying? What are the standard subscription fees to the federation?

              Andy Fittes: It is just over £21 a month—£21.40, I think.

Q116 Tim Loughton: And what was it three or four years ago? Has it changed?

              Andy Fittes: It has actually stayed frozen for the last three years.

Q117 Tim Loughton: May I come on to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and your take on how it will differ from ACPO?

              Andy Fittes: It is early days. We have congratulated Sara Thornton on her appointment and asked for an early meeting. How it will differ from ACPO is that it is not a limited company by decree, for a start, which I think is good. Apart from that, it is a developing organisation. It is a slimmed-down, representative body of chiefs. We need to engage with them, and I think we find out as we go along exactly where the differences will occur. As Sir Hugh said, it will deliver exactly the same function. It is in the Met but not of the Met. At the moment, it seems pretty much like ACPO under a new name, apart from the fact that it is not a limited company by decree. I am sure that they will develop along different lines as they go forward.

Q118 Tim Loughton: Do you agree with that, Mr White?

              Steve White: Yes, I think I do. We have a constructive relationship with ACPO, as is. I am sure that that will continue under the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Myself and Andy have presented to the chiefs’ council recently. It is definitely a useful forum for us, and I think that that will continue. We will work constructively with Sara in her new role, and I look forward to building that relationship with them.

Q119 Tim Loughton: So it is largely a rebranding exercise, as you see it?

              Steve White: Let us wait and see. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we are going through major structural reform ourselves. Although we have not changed our name, we are going through major structural reform. In fact, interestingly, I think someone commented earlier that there is not a part of the police service that is not being restructured or reformed at the moment. It is a case of “wait and see.”

Q120 Tim Loughton: In that case, if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and all sorts of other clichés, how would you like it to be different from ACPO so that it would suit your purposes better in the interests of your members?

              Steve White: That is an interesting question. I think that the separation of some of the historic responsibilities that ACPO had into the College of Policing is to be welcomed. I think the distinction between the National Police Chiefs’ Council being operational is encouraging, because it has made that distinction. From a staff association perspective, it means that we have got some clarity. If it is around learning and development, we have got the College of Policing. If it is around operational issues and matters that we need to deal with, it is the National Police Chiefs’ Council. That has provided some clarity for us.

Q121 Tim Loughton: Do you think that the dynamics of the relationship between individual constabularies and the new council will be different from how it was with ACPO, or not?

              Steve White: To be perfectly frank, I do not know. We will have to wait and see.

              Andy Fittes: On that point, I think that there are some good areas where we can work together on this, such as the pay review body. We were not keen on the pay review body replacing the PNB, but it is here now. My colleague and I are working really hard to do our submissions, but I think what ourselves, the chiefs and the superintendents association have all said is that it would be better to work together to give a view on policing, on police pay, wherever we can. If we can agree on the evidence—we are not always going to agree on every single aspect, but wherever we can—that would be a stronger voice to the pay review body if we do it on behalf of policing. It would be good to work with a new body together; in the past perhaps we have worked to opposing or just different streams. We have not tried that.

Q122 Yasmin Qureshi: I just wanted to mention the legal costs that you had. It is right to say—I think it is quite proper, so this is not in any way intended as a criticism—that quite often when you have officers who are charged with, or have to deal with, legal matters, you often get the best lawyers in the business, and you often tend to have to go privately to pay for that. Is that probably one of the reasons why the legal bill is quite high?

              Steve White: Yes, that is quite right. Of course, that is one of the benefits, or it is the major benefit, of being a member, and that is why our subscription rates are in excess of 98%, because members understand the benefit—if they only need one issue that needs legal support, it will certainly pay back in spades their subscriptions.

Q123 Yasmin Qureshi: You said that you have contacted the Chair of the Police College to have a discussion. What sorts of issues will you be discussing?

              Steve White: Is this in relation to the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Sara Thornton? Well, clearly they will be about how we are going to work together; where we have common goals; where we have agreement; and more importantly perhaps, where we have disagreement. And at the top of the organisation, in terms of chief constables, and of course our members, who actually do the policing, there needs to be that strong relationship, so that when we criticise or have issues we can work through those processes. It is about building that relationship, as far as I am concerned, so that when we can see the problems coming along, we can deal with them and get on with policing our communities, which is the most important thing.

              Andy Fittes: And with regard to the College, we both have regular meetings with Alex and I think we are looking for collaborative ways we can work together, to deliver things such as the BME 2018 project. That has our full support and if we share good practice, we can hopefully move the organisations forward. We need to do it; as you said earlier on, Chair, we both need to do the same things.

Q124 Paul Flynn: Police Constable James Patrick was the whistleblower who wrote a blog, and later a book, exposing the way that crime figures were falsified by the Met police. He has left the police now, but there is a possibility that there might be repercussions as far as his previous conduct was concerned. As he is a former member of the Federation, will the Federation be defending him in any action taken?             

              Steve White: If he was a subscribing member at the time of the allegations, then he would be represented and entitled to representation; certainly representation, yes.

              Paul Flynn: Thank you.

Q125 Chair: Is it now time to turn the page? Can you tell this Committee that after all that has happened in the last year, the Federation has now turned the page and is looking to the future?

              Steve White: Unequivocally, yes. The organisation is working very hard, looking forward to the next couple of years. The delivery of the reforms that Sir David Normington has recommended is well on track. Certainly, the noises that we are getting from the Home Office are that we are going in the right direction. But of course the important thing around all of this is that with the adoption of the new core purpose that the Federation has immediately adopted around public interest and indeed putting our members at the heart of everything that we do, to be a slimmed-down but more responsive organisation, I think we are well on track for that.

Q126 Chair: And in respect of the Committee’s recommendations, have you now returned some of the subscription money to your members?

              Steve White: Not yet, but it’s a work in progress. Sadly, the current structure of the way that we are financed is hugely complex. It’s hugely complex and it will take some time to unravel. If we get to the point where we can do that, and I hope that we can, then we will.

Q127 Chair: What do you mean, “If you can get to the point”? Don’t you want to send them their money back?

              Steve White: No, no, no—we will get to the point where we can assess it, and then we will determine what we can then do.

Q128 Chair: Right, but it’s still your intention to give them their subscriptions back?

              Steve White: If we can afford to do it, then I see no reason why we couldn’t. Having said that, of course there is an awful lot of complexity in terms of, well, who does it go to? Is it all current subscriber members? Is it previous subscribing members? How do we do it and of course, more importantly, can we afford it, or can we actually give benefits back to our members in a different way?

Q129 Chair: It sounds a bit like equivocation to me, Mr White.

              Steve White: If I could give you a definitive answer, then I would, but we’re six months in and there is still a lot to do.

Q130 Chair: Are you saying this is subject to discussions on your executive, which need to be concluded before—?

              Steve White: Certainly. Across the whole of the organisation, there is a huge amount of work to do around the finances.

Q131 Chair: Will you write to us and tell us the final sum—? They’re not going to get their cheques for Christmas?

              Steve White: Sadly not—not this Christmas.

Chair: Mr White and Mr Fittes, thank you very much for coming in to give evidence, and may we wish you a very happy Christmas and a happy new year?

              Steve White: The same to you.

              Andy Fittes: Thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Dame Shirley Pearce, Chair, and Alex Marshall QPM, Chief Executive, College of Policing, gave evidence.

Chair: Thank you very much for giving evidence. We did say to you, when you last appeared, that we would be inviting you back to look at progress for the College over the last year and a half. It is going to be two years next February, so the Committee decided to have a look at progress that has been made at an early stage. It is part of an inquiry we are doing on the landscape of policing. When we produce the report, it will look at the NCA and other organisations, so we are not just picking on your, Mr Marshall. We are looking at the whole landscape, but we are looking particularly at the College, because we all have high expectations for it.

You have discovered, Dame Shirley, that it is not Loughborough, is it?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: No, but it has some things in common with Loughborough: a real commitment to continue to improve, which I welcome.

Q132 Chair: Mr Marshall, you must have been disappointed with the evidence of two of our witnesses. First of all, we have Sir Hugh saying that it will only get credibility once it is independent, and that at the moment you are owned by the Home Secretary—and she does tend to use you a lot when she is making set speeches, I have noticed, over the last 18 months.

Secondly, you heard that the College is getting only six out of 10 from the Police Federation. It must be disappointing that you did not quite get the plaudits that perhaps you would have expected after 18 months.

              Alex Marshall: I think they made realistic comments. It was interesting that the other officer from the Federation, Andy Fittes, said he would have given a higher mark than that if he had been asked. But I think they raise real concerns about how independent we are seen to be and about the connection we have or have not made with our membership in policing.

Q133 Chair: Would you like to break free—in the words of the song—from the Home Secretary and become a truly independent body? I know it is difficult for you, because you are the chief executive of this organisation and obviously as we have heard, you are owned—not you personally, but the organisation—by the Home Secretary. Would it give you more credibility if you were that independent organisation? For example, like the organisation that was headed by Dame Shirley Pearce? An organisation independent of the Home Office.

              Alex Marshall: I think it is very important that we assert our independence. For example, there is nobody from the Home Office on the board that holds me to account, and I am also a board member. There is nobody from the Home Office on the Professional Committee that you heard referenced by the other witnesses, where much of the day-to-day work and the current priorities and standards undertaken by the College, are discussed and agreed. But we cannot escape the fact that two thirds of our funding comes from the taxpayer via the Home Office and that in law, as a company limited by guarantee, as well as an arm’s length body, clearly there is involvement of the Home Secretary.

Q134 Chair: So if that was changed and we recommended that, actually, it should be independent—of course, we cannot stop you being funded by the taxpayer, you have to be—that would be better for you, credibility-wise.

              Alex Marshall: Chair, long term, our intention is to achieve chartered status—we would like to be the Royal College of Policing—but we know, to get to that point, one of the first hurdles via the Treasury is to achieve a majority of our income other than grant in aid. I am pleased that we are making progress in that direction, but we are not there yet.

Q135 Chair: In terms of the recommendations of this Committee in our last report, how many have you implemented, Dame Shirley?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Specific recommendations?

Chair: We recommended that you be given the opportunity to re-appoint the board. Have you now been given the opportunity to refashion the board? We felt it was very odd: the board was appointed first, then of course you were appointed.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: That’s right.

Chair: That has now become something of a tradition in the Home Office with their various appointments—that you get the panel in first and then the chair. Have you been given any discretion to appoint members of the board?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Yes, let me tell you what we have done, because I think it is a very significant piece of work that we have just completed and which the board approved at its last meeting. We have done a review of the board effectiveness and that was a thorough piece of work that involved debates and questionnaires and interviews with members. It showed up two big features. One is that many board members felt a tension between their role as directors of the College and their representativeness for the organisations from where they were appointed. That is not a healthy dynamic on a board. It also became very clear that they felt that the board was too big. So, to cut a long story short, the board has agreed to reduce itself in size.

Q136 Chair: So you have the power to do that.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We have a power to do that.

Q137 Chair: You do not have to ask the Home Secretary?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: It is currently with the Home Secretary for approval, but she is being kept in touch with our recommendations all the way through, and all the messages are that she welcomes this.

Q138 Chair: So you are telling this Committee, in respect of the first recommendation that we put in our conclusions, that you have done your review, the board is too big and you want it reduced; and you have given that piece of work to the Home Secretary, with your recommendation that it be reduced.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Yes, and we are recommending that it reduces from 15 to 11, and that the number of PCCs reduces to one, and the number of ACPO members reduces to one, so that all the representative parts of policing have one member there.

Q139 Chair: Have you done anything about ethnic representation? We were very concerned that out of the board that was previously constituted, there was only one ethnic minority person on the board.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: There is still only one ethnic minority person on the board, but we are about to advertise for another independent non-executive director, and we will do all that we can to ensure that we use that position to increase the diversity of the board.

Q140 Yasmin Qureshi: Can I just ask in relation to the constitution of the board, is there any room for—from the previous list it appeared that there did not seem to be a space for—say, somebody from either the Crown Prosecution Service or maybe a lawyer or somebody serving, or a senior lawyer coming on to the board, bearing in mind that you are discussing ethics and practices and codes.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: There are a number of gaps in expertise and that is why we did the board review and why we want to open up the number of independent members on the board. Legal knowledge is one; educational knowledge and understanding of how professional bodies work is another. So there are a number of skills gaps that we want to use the freeing-up that we are currently delivering through this review to deliver.

Q141 Chair: Very helpful. Mr Marshall, this is the problem that you have. I have asked every police officer I have met today. I have met 15 police officers—there are an awful lot of them around Westminster—about the College of Policing, and none of them has heard of you. They have heard of Bramshill, but none of them has heard of the College of Policing. The other problem that you have is the certificate of knowledge in policing, which currently costs £1,000, which many feel is a deterrent towards people becoming a police officer. Do you understand those concerns? One, your communication issue: people just do not know you are there. They still remember Bramshill, obviously—that great class organisation, which I am sure you passed through in order to get to where you are today; but they just do not know the existence of the College. They do not know what you are there for. You are still very much a village story.

              Alex Marshall: I think I would dispute that we are a village story, but I definitely recognise that people working on the front line of policing are not yet fully aware of their professional body and what it offers them. However, we run an online knowledge area for people on the front-line of policing; 60,000 people in policing have joined that online knowledge area. We provide online training for officers. Every force in the country has signed up for that, and, actually, more than 300,000 people have registered for our online learning. We publish a newsletter and between 8,000 and 10,000 people a month are taking that newsletter.

              Next April, we will launch a membership system, and at that point all those people are already involved with us—which is tens of thousands and in one case hundreds of thousands of people—who are engaging with their professional body, the College of Policing, probably without really thinking consciously that it is their professional body, and our name: they will then be invited to join as a member and register with us. Then I think there will be a much greater connection between us and them.

              In recognising that problem, for me it has been very important to get that connection to teams of officers at the front end; therefore I used an officer from pretty much every force in the country as a front-line champion, so somebody who is on the front line of policing. We paid the salary for that person for six months to make the connection between people on front-line teams and their professional body. That proved hugely beneficial.

Chair: That’s very helpful, but you heard what the Police Federation said about when they did their training and when you did your training. It wasn’t all online; it was face-to-face. You get your best police officers and—dare I say it? It shows my age—your Dixon of Dock Greens.

              Tim Loughton: PC 49.

              Mr Winnick: Is that a reference to me?

Q142 Chair: Mr Loughton is younger than me.

              You get it through the day-to-day experience of doing things. Much of your training, in respect of the certificate of knowledge and policing, is now online, so people are not getting the necessary personal training. What percentage of those who get their certificate get it online?

              Alex Marshall: The certificate in knowledge of policing is delivered face-to-face. We are not a training organisation; we don’t provide training, although we do some leadership development training and some specialist training. We set the curriculum for policing and we set the training requirements—the educational requirements. In some cases—domestic abuse is a very good example—we set national training, and we say what the training outcome should be. We are not a training provider. On the certificate—

Q143 Chair: I know you are not the trainer, but, with respect, that is the problem. You are not the training provider, so you franchise out training to private companies. That’s right, isn’t it?

              Alex Marshall: Police forces are by far—

Q144 Chair: Is that right or wrong?

              Alex Marshall: In a very small number of cases—

Q145 Chair: The biggest provider of the certificate is an online company. Did you know that? Do you know the name of the company that is the biggest overall provider of the certificate in knowledge of policing?

              Alex Marshall: No, I don’t know the name of the company, but I have looked—

Q146 Chair: That’s a surprise, because it’s the biggest provider for those who get their online certificate. My office rang it up today. It is called Blue Light Publishing. It is a private company, and it is the biggest single provider of the certificate in knowledge of policing. One would have thought that when you train people, some will pass and some will fail the exams. Do you know what the success rate is for those who go online with Blue Light Publishing?

              Alex Marshall: I don’t know the online success rate of that particular company. The providers of the knowledge of policing that I have looked at previously provide face-to-face training. One provider provides online training, and the certificate in knowledge of policing is a pre-entry requirement for only a very small number of forces.

Q147 Chair: But it is for the Met, which is the biggest, isn’t it?

              Alex Marshall: It is a requirement for the Met, yes.

Q148 Chair: So the biggest force requires it. The biggest overall provider of the certificate in knowledge is a company called Blue Light Publishing. My office rang it up this morning, having gone to your website, and they were told that nobody fails. It has a 100% pass rate, because if someone looks as if they are going to fail, it rings them up and helps them get over the last few questions. What confidence can we have when people pay between £850 and £1,000 to get a certificate to work for the Met and when there is a 100% pass rate?

              Alex Marshall: To work for the Met, the person would then have to do the training that the Met provides—the initial training for the Metropolitan Police—and they would have to complete their two-year probation.

Q149 Chair: But they have to have the certificate first.

              Alex Marshall: To get through the door, they have to have the certificate.

Q150 Chair: Yes, but there is a 100% pass rate. Nobody fails.

              Alex Marshall: Which seems a very odd pass rate. The questions about the certificate in knowledge of policing are questions we are asking in the College. It is a system we inherited. We did not introduce the certificate in knowledge of policing; we inherited it. I have undertaken to review it, and that work is now going on.

Q151 Chair: So you accept that it is not fit for purpose at the moment, and that there is work that needs to be done.

              Alex Marshall: I’d say that there is no clear evidence at the moment about its success or failure because it has been running for a relatively short period of time. There have been enough questions asked about it for me to review the way that the certificate in knowledge of policing is run.

Chair: I suggest that you do what my office did this morning: go on to your own website, ring up that company and ask to go online. You will find that it is not based in London—I don’t know whether it is based in Dubai or somewhere else. You need to find out who is providing this kind of support. I urge you, as the chief executive of this organisation, to do so. That is the best way to move forward.

Q152 Mr Winnick: May I seek clarification? The Chair’s comments are extremely interesting, and I am surprised that the chair and the chief executive of the College of Policing were not aware of that. To clarify the point, those who pass through the online process do not become police officers, but it is a successful way of making an application to become a police officer. We should make that absolutely clear. Am I right?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Yes. May I just add that one of the themes that runs through the challenge we have on pretty much every front is the variation between how the forces operate the standards we set? So it is a different process to get into the force in one place from another.

Q153 Chair: Of course, and we do want to see this, but the Met requires a certificate of policing and I would be grateful if you would have a look at that, Mr Marshall, since you are the provider and it is all on your website.

One final question from me before I go to Ms Qureshi: do you think that is why the Commissioner seems to lack the confidence in the College that he ought to have? He keeps talking about the body of knowledge being held in big universities. We would like to see the body of knowledge being held by the College, with all the police forces coming to it. We see the College as the central training ground, not other universities, so why does he keep talking about them rather than the College?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I have had lots of discussions with Sir Bernard about this. His central point, with which I have huge sympathy, is that across the country we do not have departments of policing, which are bits of the university that really care about the academic base for policing. That is what is different for policing compared with medicine or the health professions, which we know are so different.

              I do not think it is the place of the College to be the provider of all knowledge. It is a signposting place—it sets the standards. It should be encouraging forces to work with universities to create the infrastructure which the profession needs. At the moment, the profession of policing and the people delivering policing are expected to behave professionally, but they do not have the infrastructure that other professions have. They do not have a knowledge base that is easily accessible, so the forces and universities need to be establishing partnerships to grow that knowledge base and the College needs to support that, not take its place.

              I understand where Sir Bernard is coming from. I have not perceived it as him thinking that we are failing to deliver, but rather that the universities and forces need to work better together, and we will do all we can do encourage that.

Q154 Yasmin Qureshi: I want to explore a couple of areas. First, I understand that not all police forces require the certificate of entry, but for those that do, such as the Metropolitan Police, it costs something like £800 to £1,000. Can the College of Policing do anything about that, such as abolish the need to get a certificate?

              Alex Marshall: We are the organisation that sets the national entry requirements, so we could decide that this pre-qualification was not good and we could change the system. Also, in terms of paying that fee, the two biggest forces that require this certificate before joining also provide bursaries on application from people who are finding it hard to pay that cost.

Q155 Yasmin Qureshi: That is if people go to places that give bursaries, but not everyone who wants to apply for the certificate will get a bursary. Are you not therefore effectively excluding quite a lot of the people from financially disadvantaged families who the Metropolitan Police probably want to attract? A thousand pounds is a lot of money.

I am a barrister and when I was practising each year I had to pay for my professional development training, but a thousand quid was too much to pay and a young person who wants to be a police officer would have to pay that sort of money in London. Will the College consider either getting rid of this entry qualification or, if not, to make it free so that, if people pass it, they can go ahead?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: As Alex says, we are looking at that at the moment. It is not our entry qualification—it is not us who say, “You must have a CKP.”

Q156 Yasmin Qureshi: Who tells the police that they do not need to have that as a prerequisite to joining the police force—is that the Home Office?

              Alex Marshall: There are a number of ways that somebody can apply for the police and they have to meet a minimum standard. One of the ways of meeting that standard is the certificate in knowledge of policing and we licensed the providers of that certificate. We are going to review it. We have heard some of the questions that you are raising elsewhere as well and we think that those are important questions that we need to answer. But I should also stress that organisations like the Metropolitan Police are looking at how they ensure that it does not prevent someone who cannot afford it from joining the police by helping them financially or by incorporating the certificate into their first few weeks of learning.

Q157 Yasmin Qureshi: I understand that they will try to assist, but I am just saying that the ground reality is that if you are a young person who is thinking of joining, the fact that you have to pay this sort of money will automatically put you off. You therefore may be automatically preventing many young people from applying. I do not have a quarrel about a test or certain processes, but you shouldn’t have to pay to apply for a job. It is about the only job for which you need to apply for a certificate. The financial side should be not only reconsidered, but taken out.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: That is quite difficult, because other professions do have up-front costs for trainees.

Q158 Chair: Thank you. Just before I bring in Mr Flynn, have you visited any of the online providers?

              Alex Marshall: I have not personally visited the online providers. There is a part of the organisation that looks after the licensing of the providers for this particular piece of training. It is not the majority of the training.

Q159 Chair: May I suggest to you, as the chief executive, that you try to visit one of them? This is something that we say to the Home Office when they have online providers for English language tests and indeed to the DVLA. It is worth a visit. The Committee will be trying to visit one of them before the inquiry is over. It is really important, because there is a lot of interest in this and a lot of concern about online provision.

              Alex Marshall: Chair, may I just make a point? I am of course happy to visit one of the CKP providers. The majority of online training is via our own organisation. The system is called NCALT, and I have visited the provider many times. Online training is also put on by local forces, using the College of Policing NCALT system. Most online training in policing is not provided by a private company; it is provided by the College of Policing.

Chair: Yes, but the biggest provider for the certificate of policing is a private sector company. I think it would be worth your visiting. We certainly will be.

Q160 Paul Flynn: You heard the previous evidence and the concern that we have about endemic corruption, particularly in the Met. What is the best that you hope for from the code of ethics and what is the worst that you fear?

              Alex Marshall: I thought it was interesting to hear from the Police Federation earlier that it now uses the code of ethics as the starting point for its own training. The code of ethics also features all the way through the covert police training that we provide through the College of Policing and helps people to understand how to make difficult ethical decisions when working in difficult environments. For me, the success of the code of ethics will be that it is seen as being professional. A code of ethics or conduct is used in all the serious professions. This is one aspect that we want to introduce to raise professional standards in policing. It will be a success when it is used on a daily basis by people in policing who have to make difficult decisions.

              Anecdotally, we are already hearing how the code of ethics is being used in that way by front-line professionals, but we only published it and it was only laid as a code of practice four months ago, so it is very early days. We have conducted research into how codes of ethics succeed in other professions and organisations and it is quite clear that if it is led from the top, if it is reinforced throughout someone’s career and if people are reminded of it in a tangible way with real examples, it improves integrity and raises professional standards.

Q161 Paul Flynn: Have you got an example that you can quote of a success?

              Alex Marshall: In medicine, in accountancy and in many others. We conducted a proper piece of research to see that where codes of ethics have been introduced, they have produced beneficial results. We are happy to share that research with you.

Q162 Paul Flynn: Have you read the report on Operation Tiberius? Are you aware of its completion?

              Alex Marshall: Only the headlines.

              Paul Flynn: It was linked to The Independent, and I think it is available there.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: The code is a very important framework for helping officers on the front line use their discretion with confidence in the very difficult situations that they find themselves in every day. If they are able to account for what they have done using the nine policing principles, if they know why they chose a particular piece of action, because there is evidence that that is the right thing to do, if they showed respect and selflessness and if they were transparent about how they operated, they should expect their senior officers to support them if anything goes wrong. They will have used a framework—a professional code. That, for me, is the value of it. It is about empowering people on the front line to feel that they are making the right decisions.

Q163 Paul Flynn: Do you expect it to have an influence on the conduct of brand new police and crime commissioners and chief constables? The number of complaints made against them recently has been lamentable.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I very much hope that everybody in policing will value those policing principles and will, as it says in the code, use them to challenge when they see behaviour that is less than they might desire. That is one of the values of the code that we haven’t talked a lot about today but that is terribly important, because in a very hierarchical environment it is quite difficult to challenge, particularly upwards. If there is a document and an expectation that that will happen, I think it will. It will be more likely, anyway.

Q164 Paul Flynn: In the country of Georgia, they had a police force that was endemically corrupt, and their solution was to sack them all and start again. Do you think there are elements of the Met where that would be the only solution?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I don’t think I will comment on that.

              Chair: Thank you so much for that, Mr Flynn.

Q165 Tim Loughton: To follow on from Mr Flynn, do you think there should be stronger sanctions for those who break the code of ethics?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We should not have a simplistic notion of what breaking the code of ethics is. It is a set of principles that help to guide your behaviour. I hope they will be discussed, and I hope that if people feel that somebody near them hasn’t delivered perfectly to the code, it will be discussed without their feeling that a ton of bricks will come down on them. That is how behaviour improves and learning happens. Clearly, if there is sufficient deviation from the principles, all the things in the code of ethics about conduct and misconduct come into play, but there has to be a recognition that, at the lower level, there is a degree of latitude. We want people to use the code to learn.

Q166 Tim Loughton: There is a bit of a grey area, and it is not just the College of Policing—it also applies to the medical colleges in particular—about when a low-level breach is not taken seriously enough and it should become a misconduct matter. Doctors, surgeons, or whatever, are perceived to be getting away without consequences. Given some of the past instances under your predecessors, it is perhaps more of a possibility within the police. How are you going to guard so that your thresholds are rather more tightly defined, and therefore respected by the police, the public and scrutineers?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: There is no perfect way of being confident that you are guarding against that. You have to keep talking about it, and you have to make it clear to the public so that they have an understanding of what you are doing. Transparency is the way we have to do it. We have to keep talking about it. All the evidence that Alex is talking about shows that codes of ethics work well where they are continually referred to and used, where they are the discussion around the water cooler, et cetera.

Q167 Tim Loughton: Given our earlier conversation about the lack of brand awareness from your own police members, the brand awareness among the public is going to be even lower. It is important that the public have confidence in the police and an awareness of what a code of ethics actually means and the implications of not living up to it at whatever level. How are you going to sell yourselves rather more transparently and robustly to the public in terms of your actual role and when they should be able to judge whether you are taking that role competently, or whether you are soft-pedalling on police members, as it might be seen?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Obviously that is a challenge. We will have to use a variety of different ways to engage the public. We will make all our consultations public. At the moment we have the leadership review, and we are inviting comment from the public, as well as from within the police service. I am quite confident that, once we have our membership platform up and running, and once people know their members and are getting communications from us, it will be helpful. At the moment, we cannot communicate directly with our members. We don’t have their e-mail addresses, and we have to do it through forces, which is a bit of a handicap. It would be very helpful to be able to do that. I am not at all surprised that many people on the front line do not know us, because we have not been able to communicate directly with them. I would welcome being able to do that.

Q168 Tim Loughton: I think you have a bigger problem than police commissioners have had. The awareness of police commissioners, both when they were first invented, in terms of people turning out to vote for them, and even now after they have been around for a couple of years, other than perhaps for those who have deviated from their job—they became rather more high profile—is a real problem. How does one actually raise that awareness with the public? Just having consultations in public is fine and good, but it does not make the public actually aware of you.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: No. We have to use lots of opportunities. Alex’s media appearance rate has increased dramatically over the past year—

              Tim Loughton: There is only one of him, that’s the trouble.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: There is only one of him.

Q169 Tim Loughton: Linked to that—getting a “royal” in front of your name may help—what other steps does the College need to take to become a chartered body other than the funding self-sufficiency that we have already covered? What more will it take to get to that point?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We have to demonstrate that we are delivering what we say that we are delivering. I am personally less bothered about rushing towards chartered status and more concerned that we get the things that we are doing now right. So you will not find us on the board having great long discussions at the moment about getting to royal chartered status. We are really concerned to get to our members, understand that the learning packages are fit for purpose and deliver something that we are all confident about. Then we can start thinking about whether the Privy Council thinks that we meet its criteria.

              Alex Marshall: May I add to the previous point?

Q170 Chair: Yes, of course.

              Alex Marshall: Thank you. One of the ways in which the public will increasingly notice what we are doing is through the standards reset for policing. We are responsible for setting the standards for police forces in England and Wales and the professional standards for individuals. This week is a good example, because domestic abuse standards will be published—a draft will go out to public consultation for the next eight weeks. Clearly, it is an issue rightly with a very high profile. Last night’s “Panorama” programme was also a very good example and showed the use of body-worn video that had been trialled through the College of Policing and deployed in Hampshire and Essex in the examples given. So through matters and issues that are really important to the public, they will see that we are the organisation publishing standards, that we are raising standards in policing and that we put those standards online. In the past few months, we have put all the standards for policing on our website so that the public can see the standards that are set locally.

Q171 Mr Winnick: You started off with a budget, as I understand it, for 2013-14 of around £50 million. Is that correct?

              Alex Marshall: No, that is the grant in aid element of our funding.

Mr Winnick: Yes, but in the information I have, it is described as a budget for 2013-14 of around £50.

              Alex Marshall: No, it is about £76 million.

Q172 Mr Winnick: So the information that I have is incorrect. Okay. Now, as I understand the position—I hope the information given is correct—the Home Secretary decided that in the third year there will be reduced central funding and you will be expected to find ways of financing yourself. Is that correct?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We are suffering reductions in funding like every other public body, yes, but we are also looking to supplement our income with commercial activities.

              Alex Marshall: Just to be clear, there is not a three-year deadline on our funding. We are anticipating that we may receive cuts in our funding in line with the sort of cuts that are happening elsewhere in the police service, but there is no cliff edge to the funding that we receive from the Government.

Q173 Mr Winnick: You are working on the basis that central Government funding for the College will be steadily reduced—

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: For the foreseeable future—

              Mr Winnick: Yes or no?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: Yes.

Q174 Mr Winnick: When it comes to membership fees, there is some doubt. In a report, which obviously you have seen, we expressed concern that that is not necessarily the best way of raising revenue. In order to survive, obviously organisations like yourself would have expected in the past to rely on central Government funding, but in this different financial climate it is not surprising that that is not going to be so. Are you saying in effect to the Committee today that you are quite satisfied, on the basis of reduced central funding, that you will be able to meet all your costs and to have sufficient funds?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We could always do with more resource, but we are satisfied that in the near future we can manage with the resources that we have. We cannot predict too far into the future, because we do not know exactly what is going to happen. We do not want to charge members for basic things that you might expect they should benefit from as part of doing their job.

Q175 Mr Winnick: That remains policy?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: That remains our policy for as long as we can afford, through the Home Office grant, to do that. We think it is reasonable to charge people for services that benefit them for their personal career development, and other member services that are not central to their delivering their role. Especially since we are an organisation that sets standards for forces—employers as well as members—we think that, for as long as we can manage to subsidise basic membership, that is what the board would like to do. In April, we will be putting our membership platform up. We will make it quite clear which services are basic, and which ones we would expect people to pay for.

              Alex Marshall: From April, someone working in policing who needs access to the materials, knowledge and training to do their job can get that as part of their basic membership at no cost to them, but we know that many people in policing are willing to pay for other services—for example, if they are going for a promotion, they might go to a private company that provides services around that—and we will make a premium package available for people who want to pay.

              In terms of our overall income, we already earn money from our work internationally from running events, selling training, and from publications.

Q176 Mr Winnick: Internationally?

              Alex Marshall: Yes, and we have seen an increase in that in the last year. Already about a third of our total income comes from other than taxpayers’ money.

Q177 Mr Winnick: Chief Constable—Chief Executive, I should say now—can you give some indication of contacts internationally where you are giving assistance?

              Alex Marshall: Yes. It is a long list of countries that we engage with all over the world.

Q178 Mr Winnick: Could all the countries be described as democratic?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: We can provide a list.

Mr Winnick: Perhaps it would be useful, Chair, to have a list of those countries.

Q179 Chair: It would, and that would be extremely helpful. Although we welcome the fact that you are doing international work—it is very important—Dame Shirley’s point about getting it right in this country, when there is so much that needs to be done, is probably where we need to concentrate.

I have a couple of points before we end. You have heard what others said about your proposal to relax the rules governing those who join the police force and allowing people with previous convictions. This was in the public domain. It has not been published by you, so you have obviously got a whistleblower—a leaker in the College of Policing. You need to have a look at your leaks, Mr Marshall. It was in The Mail on Sunday, I think, that you were going to allow people with previous convictions or cautions to become police officers. Why is that?

              Alex Marshall: I do not recognise that at all. I do not think it is correct. I am not sure where—

Q180 Chair: Is it correct or not?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: It is not correct for the College of Policing. The newspaper article that we saw said that it was the Met that was going to be doing this.

Q181 Chair: So it is not the College. The College is not going to relax the rules?

              Alex Marshall: We are not relaxing anything, Chair. We are responsible for the vetting guidance that is published nationally. That is currently being reviewed. One of the main aspects of the review is to make sure that people are vetted not only when they join, but continuously throughout their time in the police, and I think it should strengthen that. It has raised the question of whether somebody who had a minor conviction as a juvenile could still get into the police. The basic rule is that any conviction at all means you cannot get in.

Q182 Chair: And you are not changing that?

              Alex Marshall: We do not intend to change it, Chair.

Q183 Chair: That is clear. You cannot be clearer than that. There is no need to go on. We accept that. It is nice to have a straight answer like that. Have you seen the Babu report?

              Alex Marshall: No, Chair.

Q184 Chair: A report has been written by Commander Babu for the Metropolitan Police. It is about the lack of ethnic minority police officers who manage to get through the certificate of policing. You have not seen it. The Met has not shared it with you?

              Alex Marshall: No.

Q185 Chair: Could you get a copy? As you know, when you last appeared before this Committee in February, I expressed disappointment about your record as chief constable of Hampshire. The number of ethnic minority officers declined while you were there. Are you doing better at the College of Policing? In terms of your management board, how many are from the ethnic minority community? What is the percentage at the senior level of the College?

              Alex Marshall: Chair, we are still recruiting into the College. We are still saying goodbye to people and still recruiting people in. We have now recruited into the top three levels of the organisation. That is 88 people. Half of those—50%—are women, and 10% are BME.

Q186 Chair: At the highest levels, since you have these tiers, how many are from the BME community?

              Alex Marshall: Of the executive, which is five people, there are none.

Q187 Chair: One of the reasons that you were set up by the Home Secretary was to make sure that you could increase diversity. One of the concerns—if you read the Babu report which has been prepared for the Metropolitan Police, it says that we have great difficulties in this regard. We obviously want police officers of merit, not just because they happen to be of a particular ethnicity. You would agree with that, wouldn’t you?

              Alex Marshall: I would, and you will have heard the Federation make reference to the BME 2018 programme. One of the big pieces of work that we have undertaken is to look at how we can fundamentally change the look of the senior leadership in policing by 2018. You heard Dame Shirley also reference the review of leadership that we are currently undertaking. The BME 2018 work is important in that it reaches down into policing and looks at people who are currently sergeants, inspectors and chief inspectors, and how we develop them through the system over the next few years. I am very pleased with how that is going. We are already seeing many of those people being promoted on merit, and we think that that looks positive for the future.

Q188 Chair: We will send you a letter. If you could give us some statistics, that would be very helpful. Dame Shirley, has it been difficult after being in Loughborough and in the academic world to suddenly mix with all these police officers? Is there a different culture or is there an understanding that what you want to create is a very highly respected college—an international and hopefully a royal college—that will be almost as good, if not better, than Bramshill? Bramshill is still remembered as the high watermark of police achievement.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: It is, although its record on diversity in policing will not have been strong. When you walk through the corridors and see the pictures on the walls, you do not think that that was an area of success. That is something that we have to change.

Q189 Chair: It is probably a hotel now. What is Bramshill now?

              Alex Marshall: It is still part of the College of Policing.

Q190 Chair: Oh really? That is very good. Are you full time or part time?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I am very much part time.

Q191 Chair: How many days a month?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: At the moment—I was two days a week, and for the last six months I have been three days a week. I go back to two days after Christmas.

Q192 Chair: Would it be a better idea if, at the inaugural stages of this organisation, you were full time to see through some of these big changes? Are you doing other things that prevent you from being full time?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I am doing other things.

Q193 Chair: So even if they said, “Do this full time,” you could not do it?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: It has not been suggested to me.

Q194 Chair: But if it was—I am not offering it to you.

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I would give it some thought.

Q195 Chair: Clearly, it is a big piece of work, isn’t it?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: It is a huge piece of work. You asked me what my impressions were and what my experience has been. I have had the huge opportunity—that was one of the reasons for increasing my hours over the last six months—to go out and see people in all parts of policing, doing all sorts of jobs in both front-line and support roles. I have been hugely impressed by what I have seen. The commitment to public service and the way in which policing has to pick up and deal with issues that other services are not able to manage should not be underestimated, nor should the scale of the cultural change that has to happen.

              There is a very strong command and control culture in policing which has served it well. But if we are to be an effective profession, that will have to be balanced with the creation of a culture of inquiry where we think about what we do and we grow the evidence about what works in police forces, not just in universities. I would love to see a day when we have a culture where ideas from front-line officers get listened to, get turned into evaluations and we work with universities to see whether their ideas work as well as the ideas of criminology. That has got to happen and that is the goal.

Q196 Chair: Indeed. Mr Marshall, have you spent any money on consultants since you took over?

              Alex Marshall: Yes, particularly in the early stages when I had to select and recruit my entire senior management.

Q197 Chair: How much have you spent?

              Alex Marshall: I can send you the figures, but on consultants I think it was £690,000 in the last financial year.

Q198 Chair: Why would we need consultants in an organisation that had so many experienced and clever police officers such as yourself?

              Alex Marshall: Because to change and introduce an entirely new organisation from scratch I needed some skills that I did not have in the organisation. As soon as I appointed my team of executives, my directors, I reduced the number of consultants. The change team that was in doing the work with us left and my directors now own that.

Q199 Chair: So no more consultants?

              Alex Marshall: I look to keep it to an absolute minimum, but there are always skill sets that I might need, and sometimes it is necessary to use consultants.

Q200 Mr Winnick: In view of the opening statement, I am wondering, Professor Pearce and Chief Executive Alex Marshall, whether it would be useful on going out of the building, if you tested for yourselves on whether various police officers are aware of the College. As the Chair said, there are so many here, and rightly so, because of the danger, not simply to Members but first and foremost to the public. Have you sought and heard from police colleagues about the College and whether they have heard of it?

              Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I do test it regularly.

Chair: Indeed. The reason we have been robust is that we support the concept of the College. We want you all to succeed but from what we have heard so far, there is much work to be done. You have Parliament’s support in what you are doing, but there are many important areas you need to look at as chief executive in particular, and we hope you will bear that in mind, and that the next time you come back before our successor Committee, you will be able to get 10 out of 10 instead of the six out of 10 that you were given today. Mr Marshall and Dame Shirley, thank you very much for coming.

              College of Policing, HC 800                            21