Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: College of Policing, HC 845
Tuesday 19 April 2016
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 19 April 2016
Members present: Mr Keith Vaz (Chair); James Berry, Mr David Burrowes, Nusrat Ghani, Mr Ranil Jayawardena, Stuart C. McDonald, Naz Shah, Mr Chuka Umunna, Mr David Winnick.
Questions 1 - 204
Examination of Witness
Witnesses: Steve White, Chair, Police Federation of England and Wales, Andy Fittes, General Secretary, Police Federation of England and Wales, and Chief Superintendent Gavin Thomas, President Elect, Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair: Could I bring the Committee to order and refer everyone present to the register of member’s interests, where the interests of this Committee are noted?
James Berry: Could I add that in my practice as an independent barrister I have acted for members of the Police Federation and the Police Superintendents Association of England Wales, and provided legal advice to the Police Superintendents Association and to the College of Policing?
Chair: Thank you. Could I welcome Steve White and Mr Fittes back to the Committee? Mr Thomas, congratulations on your election as president of the association.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: Thank you.
Q2 Chair: We did not manage to get in your predecessor in the three years that she was the president, but we managed to get you in early, so welcome. The purpose of this panel of witnesses today, and the next two panels, is to look at the College of Policing. The Committee decided that it would regularly look at the College because it was an integral part of the Home Secretary’s new landscape of policing. I want to start with you, Mr Fittes. When you last came before us, we were looking at a very new organisation, which was finding its way. It has now been around for a while. I visited the site near Coventry. Mr White gave them 8 out of 10 for effort but 6 out of 10 for outcomes, so that was quite a low score. Has it improved since the last time you came before us, Mr Fittes?
Andy Fittes: I am a hard taskmaster when it comes to scores, so maybe I will not do scores. But yes, they have improved. There are some concrete examples of how we, as staff associations, and the College have worked together and produced some constructive output, which is for the benefit of police officers and the public. So yes, I would say they have improved since last time.
Q3 Chair: When I came over here from the Chamber today and I asked a number of police officers whether they had dealings with the College of Policing only one in three had heard of the College of Policing. The second person had no dealings with the College. The third was complaining about the fact that they might be introducing fees. Do you hear concerns? Because you are the Police Federation, you represent the vast majority of members. In terms of profile among your members, have you detected any warmth towards the college? Is it a concept that is going to stay?
Andy Fittes: I have not detected a great deal of improvement in the officers’ knowledge of the College, and that is their next step. For myself, because I get to deal with the College, and I get to sit on these very interesting committees and do the work, I have seen the improvement. If I was going to tell the College what it should do next, it would be to spread what it is doing with me to ordinary officers who now need to know what the benefit of the College is.
Q4 Chair: Mr Thomas, in your role as president of the superintendents, what is the feeling among superintendents about the work of the College—the general feeling? Is it doing a good job? Is it doing its job too slowly? Where are the improvements? We support the College, in this Committee—we said so in our last report—but we want to try to find some recommendations that are going to be of value. Where can it be improved?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: First of all, it is good. It is improving. It is still on a trajectory. As you mentioned at the outset, it is still a relatively new organisation. I think it still has some way to go to get traction in terms of what it personally means to be a member of the College of Policing. In answer to your question, the next step for the College is developing that personal relationship.
Q5 Chair: Do you think that is lacking at the moment?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: It still needs to be improved in terms of what it means to PC Thomas coming on the afternoon shift this afternoon being a member of the College of Policing. What does it mean for me personally in terms of my own personal development? I still think there is some way to go yet. But that is not being critical; I just think that is where we are in terms of the maturity of the College of Policing in its journey as a representative body for policing.
Q6 Chair: Do you have a representative? Does your organisation have a representative on the board?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: Yes, we do. That will be me, as of next week.
Chair: Excellent. So you will be even more in tune with what they are doing?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I will, and have a voice representing those views as well.
Q7 Chair: Before I come back to you, Mr Fittes, since we have Steve White here, as chair, Mr White, could you just comment on two issues that are in the public domain? The first is that it was reported in The Guardian on 18 March that officers of the Federation have been arrested in respect of moving funds from the Police Federation account into a charitable account. Could you enlighten this Committee any more on that?
Steve White: As you are undoubtedly aware—and it is in the public domain because of the press statement by Surrey Police—there is a live ongoing criminal investigation, so we need to be a little bit cognisant of that.
Chair: Of course.
Steve White: But essentially, over the course of the early part of March, I and the General Secretary became aware of some issues within the organisation that we felt were worthy of further investigation. That culminated during that week with a number of discussions with Surrey Police, and me, on behalf of the organisation, making a formal criminal allegation in relation to the movement of in excess of £1 million of members’ money outside of the organisation. That is a live, ongoing investigation. As you might imagine, it is not a step we took lightly.
Chair: No. So basically the Police Federation called in the police?
Steve White: Absolutely.
Chair: To investigate other police?
Steve White: One of the things that we absolutely have to demonstrate when we are talking about that kind of money was that there was going to be independent oversight of what we were looking at. We had done the initial investigation and we needed to ensure transparency and openness, which of course is a key tenet in relation to the review.
Q8 Chair: That brings me to my next question, which relates to your reserves and the funds that you hold. What are the current levels of reserves that the Police Federation has?
Steve White: In terms of the joint fund nationally, they stand at £12 million. Now, what has been interesting is that since we last appeared before the Committee a large proportion of those reserves has been spent. They have been spent—
Chair: I will come on to that in a moment. I will come on to what it has been spent on. But your current reserves are £12 million?
Steve White: Yes.
Q9 Chair: What about at a local level? What is being held at a local level? One of the concerns of the Committee the last time you were here was that you did not know how much was in the bank accounts of the individual affiliates of the Federation. Do you now know how much is being held by Leicestershire or Surrey or Sussex?
Steve White: Yes, absolutely. The year-end accounts were signed off on 31 March. I do not have those details to hand but I am more than happy to write to the Committee to give you the details.
Q10 Chair: But you are the chairman of the organisation. Since you signed them off—presumably you sign them off?
Steve White: I sign off the joint accounts.
Chair: You do not need to write to us, then, do you?
Steve White: No, this is the national accounts that I have responsibility for.
Chair: But can you not remember, since you signed them?
Steve White: No, sorry: I have told you the figure in relation to £12 million around that reserve; what you are talking about is the individual 43 Joint Branch Boards around the country.
Chair: Exactly.
Steve White: That is the data that I can share with you once I have—
Chair: Do you have that data?
Steve White: We have it centrally, yes.
Q11 Chair: So now there is no problem; they send you this information? That was the concern of the Committee.
Steve White: To be fair—
Chair: How often do they send you the information as to how much money they hold?
Steve White: Yearly. Of course the Home Secretary every year calls in the accounts of all of the Joint Branch Boards, and she will do so again this year.
Q12 Chair: We are not concerned about the Home Secretary in this Committee. We are concerned with you and what you know. So on an annual basis you will know what is in these accounts?
Steve White: Yes.
Q13 Chair: Is that what caused you concern when you saw £1 million being transferred to a charity?
Steve White: No.
Chair: This was a completely separate thing that came to your attention?
Steve White: Yes.
Q14 Chair: In respect of the letter you sent me about a case that was raised with you, you said to the Committee that 75% of your budget was being spent on legal costs—that is £40 million—and that for this year it is projected to rise to 85%. Is that right?
Steve White: Yes. This is because of—
Q15 Chair: This is a huge amount of fees paid by members, by police constables; 85% of their money goes on legal costs.
Steve White: Yes. That is something I am very proud of, because it shows that the money we are getting in subscriptions from our members is being spent in support of the members through legal support. That is the primary reason why most of the members who belong to the Police Federation pay their subscription: they know that if they require legal advice, we have the capacity to provide the very best legal advice there is.
In addition to that, certainly in the last couple of years, we have had several very significant and very large high-profile cases, which we have always considered are probably one-offs. But those one-offs seem to be getting—
Chair: Does that include the Andrew Mitchell case?
Steve White: The Andrew Mitchell case, Hillsborough, historic investigations in which we are having to support members who have been retired from the service for maybe 10, 15 or 20 years. When the fund rules were made in relation to how we fund ourselves it was never envisaged that the funds would be used to fund historical cases. That is one of the things that we are looking at. Hillsborough in itself is several million pounds.
Q16 Chair: So you see the function of the Police Federation as being overwhelmingly to provide legal advice and assistance to police officers?
Steve White: It is certainly one of them, but our members—
Chair: It is the main one, is it not, if you are spending 85% of your budget on legal fees?
Steve White: Fortunately, of course, in terms of the way that we present arguments on behalf of our members, a lot of the time it does not cost a lot of money. But in terms of representing members from a legal perspective, in terms of the amount of subscriptions they pay to us, the majority of them—
Q17 Chair: What if you were to ask the average constable, “Do you think it is right that we have spent 85% of your subs on legal fees?” A lot of them are very upset that they have to spend so much on their subs. They would not be very positive about that, would they?
Steve White: I think what they would be positive about is that over the last five years we have not increased subscription rates at all, yet the proportion of the money that we spend on legal fees has increased. So, in effect, we have kept the cost low to the member, but the benefit has gone up.
Q18 Chair: In terms of recommendation 36 of the independent review—and this Committee’s recommendation the last time you were before us—we asked that some of those subscriptions be returned to your members. We felt it was not appropriate for you to hold such a large amount of money. Was that done?
Steve White: That is essentially what we have been doing over the last couple of years.
Chair: You have handed them back?
Steve White: No, the reserves have been used to fund the services to our members. As I said in the letter back to you, Chair, when we get to the point where the review is complete and we have a complete, full picture in relation to where the money is, if we can afford to return money or to reduce subscriptions, absolutely we should do that.
Q19 Chair: We like having witnesses like you before us, Mr White, as opposed to other people who come and spin a tale because you are very straight with us. So when I said to you, “Have you returned money back to PCs up and down the country?” because you had millions and millions of pounds just sitting in a bank account, you said, “Yes, we have because we have spent it on legal services.” The answer is surely, “No, we have not returned any money.”
Steve White: No, we have not returned money to the members.
Chair: Which is what we recommended.
Steve White: Yes.
Chair: On this point, I call Mr Winnick, since he was also involved on this.
Q20 Mr David Winnick: One or two points. Mr White and Mr Fittes, I doubt if you would dispute the fact that the Police Federation have gone through a rather rough patch. Much of the publicity whenever the Federation has been in the news has been rather adverse, to say the least. Can you give any explanation as to why this has occurred in the last few years?
Steve White: Initially, you are absolutely right. Certainly going back two years, just to the point where I became chair of the organisation, we were still reeling then from a lot of negative coverage in the media, not just in relation to the Police Federation but the police service as a whole. Over the last 18 months, that has been turned around. I have said this many times at meetings up and down the country. Let us just move back to 1 March, shall we say. When did you last see a negative story around the Police Federation? That is because of the work that we are doing in relation to the review, because of the way that the organisation is transforming itself. That takes time. I entirely accept that in terms of the investigation that Surrey Police are currently investigating, that is correct; there are some negative headlines. But I would make this point: they are nowhere near on the same level that they were two years ago because we are reforming and changing the organisation. We present evidenced and coherent arguments in support of our members, and we are beginning to be listened to. It is frustrating.
Q21 Mr David Winnick: You would accept that police officers would like to feel that their organisation is held in high esteem and certainly respect. There must be a strong feeling—perhaps you will dispute it—that among such officers, perhaps the majority, there is disquiet that the Police Federation has fallen into a situation where when it is in the news, it is not good news, public relations-wise?
Andy Fittes: Building on what Steve said, we would absolutely—he and I and others talked about this—have rather not been in the press over the last three weeks over this, but we both agree that we could not do nothing. Doing nothing and hoping it goes away and does not appear in the press was not an option for this.
Q22 James Berry: I have generally been on the other side of the Police Federation in disciplinary cases, but I can entirely identify with what you say, Mr White: most federated officers are members of the Federation because they want the first-class legal representation you will provide if they get caught up in a disciplinary process, inquests, criminal case or the like. That is why, as a barrister, I am a member of the Bar Mutual—for that very reason. So I can certainly identify with what you say there.
But I just wanted to push on one point. The historic sex abuse inquiries would largely be about whether the police and the authorities investigated allegations sufficiently. There are potentially thousands, if not tens of thousands, of federated officers who will be involved. These will be historic cases, so they will be retired. It is much more labour intensive for you and the lawyers to unpick those kinds of cases. Are you confident you have the budget to represent them to the standard that you do if someone was in front of a disciplinary hearing tomorrow for a recent case? If not, where would you get those funds from?
Steve White: In simple terms, no, we do not, because we were not set up to provide that level of cover. There needs to be a proper engagement with the membership of the organisation and we need to say, “We can provide it for you, if you wish, if you think this is something that you want us to provide, so that when you retire from the service, and for 20 or 30 years past that, you are still covered for historic inquiries, but it is going to cost a lot of money.” At the moment our budget of around £21 million or £22 million a year would not cover that.
Q23 James Berry: Let us say that the Goddard inquiry calls 1,000 police officers. Maybe that is an accurate number; maybe it is wide of the mark. That would blow your budget.
Steve White: Absolutely.
James Berry: Very easily. How will you help those officers?
Steve White: Potentially, yes.
Andy Fittes: We have to be clear moving forward about how we deal with inquiries like this, because if an individual officer is held to account, it is right and proper that we as a Federation support that officer for whatever he or she is held to account for. But if it is an organisational issue then, in my mind, that is for the force to deal with and not for us to pick up the bill on that.
James Berry: I will move on to the question I was meant to be asking.
Q24 Chair: You will move on in a minute, because we have not finished with Mr Fittes on the first question. Unfortunately you will not have the benefit of the first-class service that Mr Berry was providing when he represented you, as he has declared it.
Just two final questions, Mr Fittes, on police volunteers and recruitment from the BAME community. 15,000 staff jobs have gone, and you now have 9,000 police support volunteers. Do you think that the College of Policing should have a role in training these volunteers?
Andy Fittes: Yes. Anyone who works in the police environment needs to have the proper skills in order to do it.
Q25 Chair: Are they providing training at the moment?
Andy Fittes: I would say no, because they are struggling to create the remit by which they train officers and explain to officers how they are going to be trained.
Chair: But you would like to see them acquire that role?
Andy Fittes: Yes, anyone who works in policing should have the proper skills to do it.
Chair: For the police support volunteers?
Andy Fittes: Anyone, yes.
Q26 Chair: In terms of BAME recruitment, do you think enough progress has been made in sending out a message? This is clearly a part of the College of Policing’s remit; you sit on the board.
Andy Fittes: Yes.
Q27 Chair: What has the college done in respect of recruitment and more BAME officers and the promotion of those officers? Do you think it is a good record?
Andy Fittes: The College has tried hard. Everyone in policing has tried to achieve better representation in policing. Is it enough? No, it is not, because we have not achieved the levels we should have done, so everyone needs to try harder, and we need to look at different ways of achieving, because we have tried for decades, probably, now to do this and we have not succeeded. We need to start to look at different ways of trying to succeed.
Q28 Chair: Of the 43 chairs and secretaries of the Federation, how many are from the ethnic minority communities?
Andy Fittes: I do not have that; we are going through the process of finding out. Minimal, I would say. I would know if it was a sizeable—
Q29 Chair: Are there any chairs of any of the Police Federation branches who are black or Asian or from the ethnic minority communities?
Andy Fittes: I do not think there are.
Q30 Chair: Are there any on your executive committee?
Andy Fittes: Yes.
Chair: How many?
Andy Fittes: Two.
Chair: Out of?
Andy Fittes: About 30.
Q31 Chair: What are you doing about it?
Andy Fittes: Part of the review is to deal with this issue.
Chair: You are talking about the College of Policing review?
Andy Fittes: No, the internal review.
Chair: You are having a review on this as well?
Andy Fittes: Yes, part of the review deals specifically around protected characteristics and how we deal with them in future. The Federation will probably hopefully lead the way on this. Because we are a regulated body, whatever we do around protected characteristics is going to be regulated, and I hope that if we can succeed people can look at what we have done and think that might have a wider role to play in policing.
Q32 James Berry: Just to return to my last question to make sure the Committee has the answer correctly, if you have a vast swathe of officers asking for protection cover in the Goddard inquiry and you breach your reserves, you will be going to the forces and saying, “You should be paying for this”, and in turn they may have to get the Home Secretary to ask?
Andy Fittes: Before we get to that stage we need to work with the forces, PCCs and the inquiry to say, “This is the group of people we represent and under what circumstances. This is who you should represent and under what—” because otherwise we are going to reach the point that we do run out of money halfway through, and that will not be good. We need to do that now.
Q33 James Berry: But the bottom line is that when the money runs out, you will be saying, “We cannot provide that representation”?
Andy Fittes: I would like that discussion before we get anywhere close to that.
Q34 James Berry: Absolutely. The chair of the College of Policing has said there is an inconsistent and variable practice in police education that risks undermining the professionalism of the police service. First, is that something that you recognise and, secondly, what more could the College do to ensure consistency of standards across the country?
Steve White: Certainly I have had many conversations with the chair of the College where we have discussed inconsistency. It is something that frustrates not just the College but the Police Federation of England and Wales and, more importantly, it frustrates our members. There is an inconsistency. It is ridiculous to have a situation where an officer is trained up to the eyeballs in driving a traffic car or a response car in one part of the country, and when they transfer to another force they have to start all over again from scratch. We have to provide a consistent level of training. The College plays a hugely important part in that, because that is what the College is all about. It is about providing that standard, but you have to ensure that the 43 forces all buy into that. I do personally have concerns around the structure; 43 forces in England and Wales with 43 chief constables is always going to lead to variations. It is a huge task for the College to provide that consistency, and we are beginning to see how that can be valuable, whether in undercover policing, firearms accreditation, and so on. Consistency is absolutely key.
Q35 James Berry: Let us focus on firearms, because that is something where officers are trained to an extremely high standard, and are world-leading in the work they do in this country. As in all other areas, the College of Policing does not provide that training. It is provided by the local forces to a College of Policing manual, and the trainers within the forces have to go on a College of Policing accredited training course. Are you saying that that sort of level of oversight by the College should be applied to other areas of policing, or would you say there is a variation even in firearms?
Steve White: There is a variation in firearms, and speaking as an ex-firearms officer myself, I recognise that. Just in my own region, between Gloucester, Avon and Somerset and Wiltshire, they all work very closely together in a tri-force arrangement and collaboration, but there is variation. No matter how hard you try, there will be, because you still have separate forces.
The simple answer to your question is that it would make perfect sense to have that level of oversight and buy-in, in terms of consistency. Surely it has to make sense that the training in relation to crime inquiries in Cumbria is the same training and accreditation that you get in Kent—why should it not be?—because you are talking about consistency of service to the public. I see no reason why that cannot be achieved. But you are starting from a place within the service and the culture and the structure where we are a long way from it at the moment, so it is not something that can happen overnight.
Q36 James Berry: Mr Thomas, do you agree with Mr White? If you do agree with him, how would you say that consistency could be provided where the training is not provided centrally by the College of Policing?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I think we have been consistently inconsistent. The College will set the standard, and this has been recognised by HMIC. Sir Tom Winsor articulated this extremely well, and gave tangible examples of where there were inconsistencies. The most obvious one—and I might be leaking my personal frustration here, because like Steve, we are trying to put national standards across the forces in England and Wales—is they are, to all intents and purposes, individual organisations individually led. A good tangible example of inconsistency would be the Code of Ethics, widely reported by HMIC. We all signed up to the Code of Ethics, as the Code of Ethics for Policing. Yet when HMIC inspected, we found on one end of the continuum some forces have taken it wholly, exemplified with good leadership and behaviour, and at the other end we have Code of Ethics and local values Code of Ethics as well, which has been a completely confused interpretation. That is a very good example of where inconsistency is.
You have this quandary now that the College is trying to do its level best in terms of implementing these standards across the service. It is down to leadership across the service to come together and implement the standards consistently. Just to amplify what Steve said, in the current structure, it is going to be a hard ask.
Q37 Mr Chuka Umunna: Can I ask you all whether you think that the education of officers around their use of police stop and search powers is sufficient?
Andy Fittes: We have come a long way.
Chair: We do not mind if there is no answer, if that is what you want.
Andy Fittes: No, there is more that can be done on that, because until we make the public comfortable with our use of powers, we have not achieved all we can achieve. So there is more to do.
Q38 Mr Chuka Umunna: Would you agree with that?
Steve White: The important thing here is that because of the model of policing by consent we have in this country, to a degree it is probably going to vary from community to community. We have to ensure that the community is satisfied. It goes back to the point you were just making about consistency. In theory the education and the consistent application of that power should be the same across the country, but we also have to be cognisant of the sensitivities within communities. Part of the beauty of policing by consent is ensuring that you maintain that confidence. So there will be some areas where perhaps you need to go the extra mile in order to get that confidence. In some areas perhaps less so.
Q39 Mr Chuka Umunna: But the problem is, in some senses—Mr Thomas, I will come to you in a minute—if you look at the police forces across the country, they are consistently bad in the way in which you are seeing stop and search powers being exercised. If you look at the HMIC report that came out in February, of the 43 forces, 13 were suspended from the best use of stop and search scheme and are undergoing inspections. A further 19 were failing to comply with all the rules. So 32 out of 43 forces had deficiencies. The question is: is the problem solely one of education, or is it one of how all of the forces are operating and the extent to which there is a will to do something about this problem?
Steve White: It is a mixture of the two. Gavin spoke just now around the inconstancy with 43 forces led in 43 different ways with 43 different priorities. In some areas of some forces, stop and search is perhaps used more extensively because of a particular crime problem or a particular issue. In other areas it is less so. I suspect that stop and search is not used in the rural parts of Cumbria very much at all, but probably in some very urban parts it is used a lot more. So you have to make sure you have that level of consistency.
What is difficult against a backdrop of potentially rising knife crime and violent crime is to ensure that the service has the powers that it needs to try to tackle that, while at the same time ensuring the confidence in the communities that they are serving. It is not an easy one. Some of it is probably cultural as well. The culture within the service needs to be more responsive and more open to thinking about different ways of doing things.
Q40 Mr Chuka Umunna: The same HMIC report, Mr Thomas, made it very clear that essentially, primarily, in some senses, the failure is a lack of leadership. They said, and I quote, that they were “Frustrated by the apparent lack of commitment by the leadership of forces to ensure that stop and search is used properly and legitimately and that HMIC is looking for leaders to take action to address these issues”. Why is it not happening?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I go back to my previous answer. I share that frustration. There are bound to be local nuances in terms of delivering services—localism—but in the example you have just asked us about, it cannot be, in my view, that a citizen has a different experience in how the process of stop and search is applied to them in one area, as opposed to the area next door.
My second point would be that you can have the best training, you can apply the law, but unless this power particularly is applied with empathy, transparency, and looking at it through the eyes of the person that has been stopped, then it just touches upon what Steve mentioned: you are not going to get that power recognised within communities as a power that the police need—
Q41 Mr Chuka Umunna: Sorry to cut you off. In my community—and this is a major issue in my community—we completely agree with you. You are echoing what we think. The question is: what are you guys going to do about it? I was not on this Committee in the last Parliament, but the Chair will tell you we have had officers and people in leadership positions in the different forces come and empathise with the complaints that we have made, but what are you going to do about this? Is it a problem with the way we are educating officers? You have officers coming into my community who do not understand my community, or the different cultures in it. Or is it that systems are not in place to make sure that people use these powers properly?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: It is a fundamental issue of the service coming together saying, “We need to provide how we apply this power consistently across the service.” It goes back to what you just referred to a few minutes ago. It is around leadership, but we have 43 different leaders—police and crime commissioners and chief officers and my colleagues as well, leaders in the service—who need to apply this power consistently. At the moment you have the National Police Chiefs Council, which is a co-ordinating body; it has no power. It is co-ordinating. You have the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, a co-ordinating body, with no power. So there is nobody nationally who can say, “This is how it is going to be done”.
Q42 Stuart C. McDonald: I want to ask you about the College’s slightly controversial proposals that new entrants to the police force should have a degree-level qualification. Mr White, I think I am right in saying that you have been on record already as describing these proposals as barmy; is that correct? Yes. Yet these are requirements in other countries, other professions in the UK. Some forces already have types of pre-entry qualification requirements. Some might even say that that would be one answer to the inconsistencies in training that you have already been talking about. Why do you think it is such a bad idea?
Steve White: I, for example, do not have a degree, and if I had needed to have a degree when I joined the police service I would not be in the police service. The most important thing—going back to talking about having a service that reflects the communities that we serve because of that important element of consent—I do not believe that you have to have a degree to be able to reflect that. I also think there are more practical elements, in terms of getting the right mix of people within the service. It could be more of a hindrance than a help.
Do not get me wrong: I am not saying that people with degrees should not be joining the police service. Yes, of course they should. But there should be sufficient routes into the service to allow people who do not have degrees, but maybe have skills and abilities that will be of huge value to the police service, to be able to join. To say that in order to be a police officer you have to have a degree is too restrictive. To be fair to the College, that is not in fact what they are proposing. They are still proposing a route of entry that does not mean that you have to have a degree.
Stuart C. McDonald: An apprenticeship, for example?
Steve White: Yes, and of course I would say we already have an apprenticeship; it is called a two-year probation. Often we say there is no such thing as an original idea in policing. I would still say that that is right and proper. But what we do not want is to say that you have to self-fund yourself in order to get to the point where you can start your probation. That would be foolhardy.
Q43 Stuart C. McDonald: These are obviously your views based on your own experience, but have you consulted your members about this, and what would you expect in terms of the number of members who would want to undertake these degrees or even do their masters?
Steve White: It is great that whenever we recruit as a service, it is always oversubscribed. People understand what a brilliant career it can be to be in the police service, and that is wonderful. So there will always be a cohort of people who will try that hard, but I think what will happen is that you will end up with recruits, particularly from hard to reach communities, who are not going to get that advantage. We are talking about having something that is so specific to the police service, in terms of a pre-entry qualification. An ordinary degree, for example, gives you flexibility, but if something is so defined, in terms of a pre-entry qualification for the police service, it is going to be less attractive. It is going restrict the diversity within the service.
Interestingly, there are two things that certainly my members get animated about—they get animated about many things, but two things in particular recently—and they are: the use and availability of Tasers, and the argument around needing a degree to join the police service. The majority of the members I represent, even those that have a degree, are supportive of the view you do not need a degree to be a police officer.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I will be as brief as I can; I am conscious of the time. The Association is broadly in favour. We have consulted our membership, and we are broadly in favour of it. There are some howevers within it, which I can broaden if you wish.
Q44 Stuart C. McDonald: Yes, absolutely. How do you respond to Mr White’s criticisms?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: We are broadly in favour of it, in terms of you have to look at this in the context of taking the service forward into the future and people coming to the service in the future. It needs to be professionalised, recognising the complexity of what policing is dealing with now, in terms of the change in crime and the changes in society, and how they are applying new technologies. That requires complex thinking. It needs to contribute to the overall professionalising of policing. You need to look at it in the context as well of the ambition of the service, in terms of opening up the service to different points of entry and exit and moving in the service between police staff and warranted police officer, so somebody who joins the service can come out with something tangible that recognises them as a profession—something that they can use in other fields outside service, and come back in as well. There are opportunities here.
At the moment, if you do 30 years in the police service, you may well come out of the service with nothing tangible to demonstrate the fantastic skills and the qualifications you have achieved in the service. We need to move on. Broadly, we are in favour of it.
Q45 Mr David Winnick: Mr White, the Police Federation say, in effect, in opposing graduates only, that what a police officer requires is knowledge, skills, expertise and ongoing training. Sound judgment, common sense and the ability to get involved in physical confrontation when required are equally vital. So what you are telling us is that such assets or essential needs for a police officer are such that it does not require being a university graduate?
Steve White: Yes, essentially. One point that I would make is that in terms of where we are with the College of Policing, in terms of the comments that were made earlier in relation to the engagement with the membership, in my view, what the College of Policing should be talking about is not the applicants of the future, but the people currently in the service. They have to engage with the people who are already there, the majority of whom do not have degrees. One of the reasons why the College perhaps has a bit of an issue with engagement with the service is because they see the headline, “You need a degree to enter”, and they say, “That’s great; they do not see the value that I have as an individual because I do not have a degree”. I know that that is not true, but it is sending out the wrong message. We should be concentrating on accrediting the skills, the expertise and the education that serving officers already have—picking up on Gavin’s point—and accrediting that, as opposed to looking at saying that you have to have something before you even get into the service.
Q46 Mr David Winnick: I will come in a moment to you, Mr Thomas. I know you have a strong opposing view. We respect both points of view. We are trying to get a reflection of what the two organisations consider is so important for entry into the police force.
I put this point to you, Mr White, if you would like to be devil’s advocate: there has been so much change since the fictional Police Constable Dixon of half a century ago, played by Jack Warner. So much has changed, not least technology and the rest of it. Do you need a different type of police officer than in those days, and should the entry requirement be much higher?
Steve White: What you need is a mixed economy because in policing, while of course it has changed beyond all recognition in the last 50 years, some of the basics in relation to the skills that you need remain. That is vitally important. The amount of expertise that you need in some areas of policing are such that you could argue officers are already operating way above degree level in any case, but equally there are a lot of our members out there who, day in and day out, 24/7, are doing an incredibly hard and difficult job. They are doing it incredibly well. They do not have a degree. They do not need a degree.
Q47 Mr David Winnick: Mr Thomas, you refute much of that presumably? You are on the board of the College of Policing, and the College of Policing will be giving evidence directly very shortly. You do not accept basically what Mr White, on behalf of the Police Federation, has just told us?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I accept there are going to be some challenges in terms of where we are now, and I do pick up Steve’s point on officers who are currently in the service, in terms of giving them that offer of getting their skills professionally accredited and recognised with a degree.
Just to go back to the point you have just raised, Mr Winnick, the other qualification for a police officer is always going to be a constant. This is not just me saying this. HMIC recognise this as well. It goes back to the days of “Dixon of Dock Green”. You will still need young men and women who are brave, compassionate, and prepared to put themselves at risk to protect their fellow citizens. The good example of that is only last week in Sheffield, where you saw five officers injured, one officer with a life-changing injury. That is going to continue to happen, so no matter what we do in this debate, in terms of qualification and recognising that, you are going to still require people who have those qualities, and who are prepared to put themselves at risk on behalf of their citizens.
Q48 Mr David Winnick: Could I put this to you, Mr Thomas? At this stage most school leavers do not go to university. I think it is 40%, 45%—I am not certain, but it is along those lines. Time and again, the point has been made that the police force should be representative of the community as a whole. Last week, as the Chair obviously recalls, he put questions about the representation from those who are not white and so on. Is there not this danger that if what you consider should be the point of entry is not representative, those who come into the police force in the future, based on what you or the College of Policing would like, will simply not be representative of the overall population, and that the gulf could be a dangerous one?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I am pleased you asked that question, because it is something that I have publicly recently talked about. Let us not forget where we are with this now. It is consultation, and it has come back in. We are going to wait for the consultation from the College. But at the moment you can still recruit young men and women at the age of 18 and a half into the police service. Going back to my previous point, if you had a conversation with somebody who is 28—which from memory is probably the average age in the service at the moment because of recruiting—around social media and technology, it will be a very different conversation with somebody who is 18 and a half. I agree with your point, Mr Winnick, around the diversity. We need a diversity of sociodemographic coming into the service.
There is a challenge in making sure that we get a mixture of people still coming into the service. But the overall point, as I said from the outset, is that my Association and I favour, in terms of our journey, in terms of professionalising the service, having people who are professionally recognised with a qualification.
Q49 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Mr White, I would like to pick up on some of the points you talked about earlier. This follows neatly from Mr Winnick’s question a moment ago. Would you not agree that contemporary policing is as complicated a role as, say, that of a social worker or that of a nurse?
Steve White: Yes and no, and I know that sounds ridiculous.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena: One would be helpful.
Steve White: Yes, it can be.
Q50 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: We know that those professions only accept graduates. For that reason I am confused as to why the Police Federation is against a degree-level qualification. Perhaps that is the point. You have talked about degrees, but what we are talking about is degree-level qualification. Surely that is helpful to your members.
Steve White: It can be, but it is whether or not they have to get that before they join the service. One could argue that just because another profession has that level, it means that it is applicable to all professions, and I do not wear that argument at all. I do understand that in terms of assessing someone’s ability to reach the required standard you could say that it is helpful. But policing needs—picking up on Gavin’s point—to be reflective of society. As Mr Winnick said, only 45% of people are currently going to university.
Q51 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: On that point you talked about the right mix of people joining the services. What do you mean by “the right mix”?
Steve White: The service should reflect the communities that we currently serve.
Q52 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Is there a particular group that you think would be disadvantaged if it was to move down the road of having degree-level qualification?
Steve White: The group that would be disadvantaged is those that cannot afford to go to university.
Q53 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Even with the support that is provided to those who are least well off?
Steve White: Yes.
Q54 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: That is not shown by all the statistics that are out there in terms of those entering university and university-level qualifications, including under the new system.
Steve White: I am not entirely convinced, but what you must also know—
Q55 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: They are statistics. You quoted statistics at us about your members, and we accept that. Surely you must accept the statistics that show that those from the least wealthy background have gone up.
Steve White: Until the requirement is there and we can understand whether or not it has an effect, then to a certain extent we cannot measure it accurately, can we? Certainly some of those—
Q56 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: You do not think that the situation elsewhere, in terms of other courses and other professions, will be replicated in the police?
Steve White: No, because when you are looking at a career as a social worker, barrister, lawyer, or surgeon, it is a completely different career structure, so it is going to attract different candidates. I would say that the police service is a vocation. You do not join the police service to make a huge amount of money. You join the police service because you want to serve your community.
Q57 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: I am sure plenty of people who work across the public sector would say exactly the same, because we want to make sure that there are opportunities for people to serve their country in whatever way they are best suited to do.
Turning then to the other end of one’s career, and those who perhaps retire early or leave the police service for whatever reason, are they not disadvantaged by not having some sort of qualifications? Those who retire have a lot of skills, as Mr Thomas has said. Are you not disadvantaging your members by saying that this should not be introduced?
Steve White: No. What I have said is that it is the entry requirement that we have an issue with. What I did say earlier is that the existing education and skills that police officers have should be recognised and should be accredited, so that when they leave the service they have that accreditation.
Q58 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: So degree-level qualification is fine by what you said?
Steve White: If they are going to get it within the service. What we do not want to do is to keep that door shut to some people who otherwise would join. I will be brutally frank: some people might say, “This would have been great”, but if I needed a degree when I joined the police service, I would not have joined the police service.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena: I would not dare say that, Mr White. One further point—
Chair: And we are all glad you did.
Steve White: That is very kind.
Q59 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: One further point before I bring in Mr Thomas. I heard what you said earlier about having real-world skills, and Mr McDonald talked about an apprenticeship. In PGCE training, teachers spend some time in a classroom of their own, or some time in a school; do you think that sort of model is the ideal way forward?
Steve White: It could be complex, because of course the first day in—more or less the first week that I joined the police service, once you make your oath, your attestation, you are then a fully attested officer. and you have the powers and all of the restrictions that go with it. So it is not something you can dip in and out of. At what point do you get to be given those powers? If you are going through an experience on-the-job qualification, you have to go out and you have to arrest people; you have to deal with them, I am not quite sure how that would work.
Q60 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: You talked about the probationary period earlier, so could it not be possible for a scheme to exist where people do get some time not on the front-line, not out in the community, but in a classroom, so they are able to learn the skills they need at a degree level, which is good for them, good for the police service, and ensures that people are getting on-the-job training too?
Steve White: In terms of the way the student officers are currently trained, we are definitely moving in that direction.
Q61 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: But you would be happy to see that go further?
Steve White: Absolutely, because you are recognising the skills of officers currently in the service, as opposed to having that gate to prevent them from joining in the first place.
Q62 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Mr Thomas, what is your view of the College’s proposal to require masters-level qualifications for advancement to superintending roles?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: Again, in favour. Can I just go back to your previous question? I said I am in favour of qualification. Let’s go back to the consultation. If, as it is proposed now, it is a level 6—that is, bachelor degree—we may have some reservation on that. We would have to look at the detail, but certainly where it is a level 4, higher national certificate or foundation degree, that point where you do some academia and also some practical work, as they do for nursing, is a good thing.
The other point I wanted to make was that there is an opportunity here. It is an offer, which the service can say, “Look, join the police service and you will get professionally recognised in terms of the work you are doing”. If you cannot afford it, if you are disadvantaged economically, then the College will offer you bursary or scholarship. I see this as part of the offer, reaching out to communities and saying, “Come and join the police service, you can come and get something from the service as well as offering something to your community”.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Not so barmy after all.
Steve White: No, I still think that the idea of needing a degree to join the police service, as bland as that, is barmy.
Chair: We are coming to the end.
Q63 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Just coming back to the superintending ranks proposal for masters qualifications, you also talked about direct entry, which I think is linked to this. What is the assessment for direct entry to superintendent and above? I know there have been nine successful candidates. They should now be reaching, or have reached, the end of their training.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: Literally in the next week or so. Again it is the same principle as I have just said: if they have undergone that level of intense training and development, then they should be recognised as well as somebody who comes through another route. The whole principle here is rather than looking at it being, which I have experienced, joining at 18 and a half, doing your 30 years and coming out, we need a flexibility of people who can come out, do 10 years in the police service, become a Member of Parliament, maybe do a period of time, and then come back into the police service. So we break the service up to new ideas, new thinking, and new cultures. That is the opportunity. That is the prize with what we are trying to do here. I understand it is challenging, but there is a real opportunity here.
Q64 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Final question, Chair. Does the outcome of the direct entry scheme, Mr Thomas, give you confidence in the new model of police recruitment?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: It does give me confidence but I will say that it is due for assessment at Parliament by 2019. It will be evaluated. It is being evaluated each year but it is due for final evaluation in 2019, so we shall see.
Chair: Quick question from Mr Berry and then we must close this session.
Q65 James Berry: Mr White, you mentioned that the other issue that police officers were very concerned about was Tasers. Can you just outline what the concern is, please?
Steve White: Yes, absolutely. It always attracts a lot of comment and attention. The Police Federation of England and Wales 12 months ago changed its stance in relation to the roll-out of Taser. Having seen its benefit, having seen the way that it was embedded, having seen the way that communities have accepted it, we moved to a position where we said that any frontline uniformed officer who volunteers to carry it should be afforded the opportunity. We have seen yet more instances recently where Taser has been used effectively. The incident in Sheffield, that was brought to a successful conclusion by an officer who had Taser. The first officer on the scene was not equipped with Taser. I have grave reservations that at some point a police officer or a member of the public, because we do not have the equipment that we needed, could be seriously hurt or injured. Whether that is the case in Sheffield or not I cannot comment. But our members are saying that they need it. We are pushing very hard in relation to conversations with the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable, and indeed this Committee now.
I truly believe that there is an opportunity here to give something back to the service. They see the value of it, and it is something I am deeply passionate about because my members are deeply passionate about it as well.
Q66 Chair: We must end there. Quick-fire final questions. Mr White, Mr Fittes, the last time you came before the Committee you said that the Certificate of Policing needed to be looked at again. Here is a quote from you, Mr Fittes: “As a theoretical test it does not assess people properly for what they are needed to do”. Has it changed? Is it better? Or do you still have concerns about it still not being—
Andy Fittes: I still have concerns as part of this wider debate we get the right people into the organisation—
Chair: Forget about the wider debate, talk about the test.
Andy Fittes: We test people to get the right people into the organisation. We turn them into excellent people after that once we have them; that would be what I think on that. It is still not fit for purpose.
Q67 Chair: Police Scotland, Mr Thomas. Have you or Mr White studied what is happening in Police Scotland, the way in which they recruit? We are getting evidence from Phil Gormley very shortly on what they do there. They have one uniform application system, one set of training guidance and one police force to join. Do you think that we need to be much more cohesive in the way in which we do this training, Mr Thomas?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: By what you have just said, Chair, that in itself helps to get that consistency in terms of standards, which is what we have just discussed in this Committee.
Chair: So you like that idea?
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I do.
Chair: Mr White?
Steve White: I tend to agree. We are watching the model in Police Scotland very carefully because again the Federation has said that 43 forces are too many and it needs to be reduced because of consistency and quality of service.
Chair: It is something the Committee is going to look at. We obviously look forward to being hosted by Mr McDonald, when we go to visit his country. Thank you very much for coming. If there is anything we have missed, please write to us, because the inquiry is still open. We want to put some practical suggestions to Parliament about how the College can be improved. We, like yourselves, are fans of the College, but we want it to do even better. We are most grateful to you for coming here today.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Anya Hunt, Chief Executive, Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences, and Janet Davies, FRCN, Chief Executive and General Secretary, Royal College of Nursing, gave evidence.
Q68 Chair: Ms Davies, Dr Hunt, I promise you that members of the Committee, even though some of us probably did a GCS O-level in sciences, are not going to get into the detail of what you do. We are interested in the structure of your organisations and how we can get the College of Policing to where you are—two much respected chartered organisations providing services for members. If I could start with you, Dr Hunt, why did the Society of Forensic Sciences pursue chartered status?
Dr Hunt: We pursued chartered status at the end of 2009, 2010, to move towards a better framework for offering support to our membership. Also we were looking for recognition of the professionalism that the Society had demonstrated in the previous 50 years of its history, but more towards the professionalisation of all disciplines, including forensic science, to be able to offer better support and more recognised models of certification that would be recognised by the court.
Q69 Chair: Janet Davies, obviously the RCN is one of the most respected of all colleges in the country; it is a very impressive brand name. Becoming a Royal College, which is what the College of Policing is not at the moment: what difference has it made in the history of the RCN?
Janet Davies: We became a Royal College in the 1930s, so we obviously have a long history of having that royal charter. We were established in 1916, so it is our centenary this year. It took a little while to get that royal status. It helps mostly with having a very clear charter that we work towards. It is very clear on the objectives of the organisation. Even if we wished to move away and do things that might not be so useful, it keeps us focused on the education and the welfare of nurses. It is very clear on what we should be doing. So that is very helpful.
The other thing is that image that it portrays and the standing it has. Having a royal charter in reality makes a big difference to how people perceive us, and it does help in opening doors.
In addition we work very much as multi-professional teams, so we work very closely with the medical Royal Colleges, and it helps that we are all Royal Colleges when we get together working for NICE, setting standards, and setting multi-professional standards.
Q70 Chair: Dr Hunt, you have heard the exchange about whether policing should be a degree-only profession. Yours clearly is, is that right?
Dr Hunt: Yes.
Q71 Chair: You are not as big as the RCN. What is your membership?
Dr Hunt: We have about 3,000 members in 60 countries, but about 85% to 87% is here in the UK.
Q72 Chair: Tell us a little bit about your co-operation with the universities and with colleges of education, because you do not do all the training and all the education and professional development within your boundaries. Is that right?
Dr Hunt: That is correct. In approximately 2004, following on from the Select Committee report “Under the Microscope”, the then Forensic Science Society was approached to look at the accreditation of university courses. In the early 2000s, many new universities started to develop a lot of forensic science programmes, and they became rather overwhelming. In order to look then at the quality of the forensic science that was being taught, the Society developed an accreditation scheme. That specifically looks at level 6 and level 7 courses. Since that time, the scheme has been expanded to look also at level 5, and in the very near future will also be looking at level 4 BTEC courses.
The aim of that is to allow students and the people that are footing the bills for those students—mainly parents—to make informed decisions about which courses people will take. We list on our website all accredited courses held at institutions around the United Kingdom. That has now been expanded around the world, and we do have accredited courses as far away as Australia.
Q73 Chair: Janet Davies, RCN nurses can now do a university degree, of course. At De Montfort University in Leicester, we have a big course on nursing. What is your role in education, and what kind of relationships have you built up with the colleges and universities?
Janet Davies: We have a number of roles, and we have close relationships with universities, but our accreditation tends to be at the post-registration level. Nursing has moved into being an all-graduate profession, and that means to train as a nurse, you do a degree programme, most of which are in physical universities. That means there are many suppliers, so we tend to accredit the post-registration programmes, rather than the pre-registration programmes, because we also have a regulator. The Nursing and Midwifery Council must accredit and approve that training before they are allowed to hold those courses, so they all have to be accredited by the NMC, which is the regulator. We, however, supply areas of good practice, standards of practice, much more in the practice environment than the education environment, but we also provide training for our student nurses as well as our post-registration students online, which supports their education in the university, so we work very much in tandem with the universities. Specifically for post-registration practice, then most people would be looking for RCN accreditation for their specialist practice programmes, so that is the masters-level, PhD-type programmes.
Q74 Chair: How do you help with that professional development, to take people from just being nurses and give them the additional qualifications that they need—the leadership in nursing, if you like?
Janet Davies: There are many programmes. The Royal College of Nursing has a clinical leadership programme. We do not provide that for free, because some of our products, as we would call them, are commissioned, usually by hospitals or by community services, and they are often in situ. The clinical leadership programme, for instance, is sort of ward sisters, people who are interested in leadership. We provide that in the workplace—we get the facilitators in their workplace—so we accredit the facilitators and the programmes are done in situ. We believe that is much more productive than taking people away and giving them a leadership programme, as when they then come back, nobody else has changed, and nothing else has changed in the environment. So we do lots of work in the environment to develop people’s practice.
Q75 Chair: You have no disciplinary functions? Is that conducted by you or another organisation?
Janet Davies: No. The disciplinary functions are by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, so we have a regulator, and the regulator’s sole purpose is public safety—very important for nursing.
Chair: Of course.
Janet Davies: They have the disciplinary process, and that is why they are the people that regulate the pre-registration education, which means you can be a registered nurse at the end of that, and they hold the register of nurses.
Q76 Chair: Just remind us: how many members do you have?
Janet Davies: Just over 430,000.
Q77 Chair: We will come on to financing with a later question, but what is the fee you charge your members, Janet Davies?
Janet Davies: It is just under £200 a year now.
Q78 Chair: Dr Hunt, what fee do you charge?
Dr Hunt: Our fees range from £25 for student entry, for people studying, it is up to £98 for professional membership, and £120 a year for fellows.
Chair: Thank you. Chuka Umunna on standards.
Q79 Mr Chuka Umunna: I had one other question I was going to ask you both. In both of your professions, I know diversity is an issue, in the way that it is in the policing profession, although it seems that in both your professions, you do slightly better than the police on the diversity front. To both of you, but in particular to Janet Davies, why do you think you do better on diversity than the police?
Janet Davies: We target certain areas. We feel it is very important that nurses represent the community in which they are working. It is certainly very important that nurses really understand the people that they are working with. Obviously, the people that we deal are often in a time of distress and are at their most vulnerable. We have spent a lot of time looking at the recruitment of nurses and widening the entry gate. When nursing moved into being an all-graduate profession, there was a lot of concern that it would be only certain people who would be interested, I guess, in undertaking a degree. We have found the opposite, because it has lifted the status, so people are keen to go into nursing. I think particularly in some minority populations, where going to university is seen as very important, it has opened nursing to that population.
The other thing that I think is really key is that the universities have all done a lot of work on pre-degree programmes, working with higher education, and looking at their entry criteria, so although it comes through UCAS, they look in a very different way. You do not necessarily have to have three A-levels at a certain grade; it is important you have the ability to study, that you have the right sort of will to be a nurse, and that you have the right sort of attitude and compassion.
Q80 Mr Chuka Umunna: Are you saying the new requirement for a degree-level qualification has helped promote diversity?
Janet Davies: Yes. It also has enabled people to come in later as well, so we now see that the average age of a student nurse is 29, not 18; it is older. People are coming who have had life experiences, which we think brings an awful lot to nursing. If you have had more life experience, you can understand, you can empathise better, and also they want to do that.
Q81 Mr Chuka Umunna: But in spite of the progress you have made though, you still have similar challenges to the police in terms of senior nursing positions?
Janet Davies: Yes, we do.
Q82 Mr Chuka Umunna: What are you doing to address that?
Janet Davies: We are doing a lot with that. There are specific programmes and specific targeted programmes. We are working very closely with the employers, who also see that as being an issue, and we have specific groups within our organisation that enable that to happen. In fact, as our College, we have done quite well.
Chair: Thank you. Dr Hunt, do you want to answer Mr Umunna’s question?
Dr Hunt: I would certainly agree that the universities have had a part to play in this in their diversity programmes and making programmes accessible to all. Therefore, as people come through those programmes and are qualified equally, they are playing on a level playing field when it comes to getting jobs. Now, forensic science is largely in the private sector in the UK, and I think that also has a part to play in this, because it also has its own diversity legislation in place to ensure that it is a fairer system.
Q83 Chair: Did you give a figure to Mr Umunna as to the profile of your members in terms of diversity? Could you give us that figure? If you do not have it today, will you write to us?
Janet Davies: I do not have it with me, but I would want it to be absolutely accurate.
Chair: Could you write to us, because I think that would be very useful to know? Thank you very much.
Q84 Mr Chuka Umunna: If you could, that would be useful.
My final question is maybe a little bit unfair, but I am going to ask it anyway: clearly your members work with police officers, and I was thinking when I was reflecting on the fact that you were going to be giving evidence is: what is the kind of situation where perhaps you come across an officer? It will be in all kinds of situations, not least in an A&E situation. The nursing profession is picking up stuff that is going on in my community that is simply not being recorded by the police, such as all of the serious youth violence we see happening and impacting on our minority young people. When your members come across young officers, do you think they are sufficiently trained and educated to understand all our different communities?
Janet Davies: I do not have that information, and it is not something that we have looked at in terms of our relationships with the police, although we are working very closely with the College of Policing.
Q85 Mr Chuka Umunna: Of course, Dr Hunt, many of your members will be practitioners presumably within the police service?
Dr Hunt: Absolutely. We have many members who are police officers. We are working widely with police officers as well. It is very interesting that many of them are taking up some of the training and competency assessments that we offer, rather than that offered by the College of Policing, but that is perhaps another issue.
Q86 Mr Chuka Umunna: No, no. Why is that? You cannot just go over that one.
Dr Hunt: I think some of the advantages that the forensic community offers are that we have a fully self-sustaining financial model, and we are 100% independent of the police force. For example, we offer a certificate of competence for crime scene investigation, and that is being taken up by police forces because of the independent element and the fact that it is seen to be fit for purpose and offering good value for money. We are a registered charity and all our income comes from our own activities, which I think is key.
Q87 Mr David Winnick: As far as financing is concerned, would you describe both of your organisations as being self-financed?
Dr Hunt: Yes, 100%.
Mr David Winnick: 100%. The same, Ms Davies?
Janet Davies: Yes. Our main role as a College is from membership income, but we also have a wholly-owned subsidiary, our publishing company, which does make a profit that we can then bring into the organisation, which supports keeping our membership fees low. That would be the nursing journals and so on that people would buy; we publish those. It is owned by us, but it is run slightly separately. We also have a charitable sector, but the charitable sector—we have a foundation—does not support the workings of the organisation; it looks at supporting nurses in need, and also helps fund some nurses who require financial help with their education.
Q88 Mr David Winnick: Does that give both organisations a degree of separation from Government, so you do not rely on central Government? The independence that your organisations obviously have is clearly, to say the least, something that you are proud of.
Janet Davies: Yes, we are entirely independent from Government, and we are also a trade union, of course, and we are a trade union that has no political affiliations whatsoever.
Mr David Winnick: I never suspected for one moment that you did.
Janet Davies: No, but we are very proud of that, so that keeps us very independent. We can speak for nurses, and our nurses can work with us, totally independent of any political influence.
Q89 Mr David Winnick: Are you affiliated to the TUC?
Janet Davies: No, we have no political affiliations, nor to the TUC.
Q90 Mr David Winnick: That would not necessarily be political, but be that as it may. Dr Hunt?
Dr Hunt: Approximately 40% of our income comes from membership, and 60% comes from our other activities, including the accreditation of educational programmes, running training events, CPD and so on.
Q91 Mr David Winnick: Like the organisation represented by Ms Davies, totally independent?
Dr Hunt: 100%, yes.
Q92 Mr David Burrowes: What is your budget?
Dr Hunt: We have a turnover of around £350,000 a year, and we have an asset value of around £700,000.
Mr David Burrowes: Ms Davies?
Janet Davies: It is obviously much more significant than that, but I will give you that. I do not have it absolutely to hand, because I would like you to have it in the separate areas of the three organisations in the group. I think it is better I give it that way.
Q93 Mr David Burrowes: In terms of income generation—this is probably particularly appropriate for Dr Hunt—do you provide any services or training to other bodies, to other countries?
Dr Hunt: We do a small amount of overseas training, but that is very minimal, to be honest. Our income is largely from within the UK, and it is events, training courses, continual professional development, certificates of competence.
Q94 Mr David Burrowes: Do you have any codes of conduct in relation to the types of organisations or indeed the types of countries that you would do business with?
Dr Hunt: There would always be a due diligence process in looking at the engagement. Yes, there would be. I cannot give you a list now. We have not ever said no, but we have never been approached by anyone that—
Q95 Mr David Burrowes: The country that you have had a connection with in relation to providing services: which one is that?
Dr Hunt: I cannot really say at the moment, because it is still waiting to get the contract signed and I think that would be a little bit stupid.
Mr David Burrowes: Okay, fair enough.
Q96 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Ms Davies, what impact has the introduction of mandatory degree-level entry had on the way in which people have progressed and been retained in the profession?
Janet Davies: We tend to have problems with retention of nursing staff, but it is not those newly-qualified nursing staff; it is nursing staff more generally, probably at the middle of their career. There has been some initial difficulty, I believe, in the students and retention of students at the beginning, probably slightly higher than the previous method.
Q97 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Just relating to the difference between those who have been through the degree-level entry and those who are already in the profession, has there been resistance to the changes from the latter?
Dr Hunt: Initially there was. Initially when all-graduate was proposed, there were clearly some very difficult conversations. There were some people who were very concerned, who obviously did not have a degree; they were worried that they would be left behind, particularly as there were quite a lot of changes in nursing in short succession. We had a purely state-registered nursing qualification that was done by hospitals, obviously with a standard programme of education by the then General Nursing Council. It then moved to the United Kingdom Central Council and it moved to a diploma, and then it moved into higher education authorities, so there was a lot of change in succession. It probably needed to do that rather than go straight to a degree, but people were very nervous about their own positions. I think now people accept it generally, but I think some of our older nurses still do not quite see it.
Q98 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: I am very conscious of time, so a yes or no answer will be fine to this, if possible. Do you believe that the cultural understanding of nursing has improved due to the introduction of degree-level entry? Is it being viewed more as a profession?
Janet Davies: Yes.
Chair: It is a shock that it has all finished so quickly, but before that, we have Naz Shah.
Q99 Naz Shah: Are there any elements of your organisational structure and functions that can be directly applied to the College of Policing’s ambitions?
Janet Davies: Yes, and obviously we have been talking to the College of Policing, because we have been helping with some of their education work. We started as a College of Nursing and we then had the charter status, then in the 1970s we also became a trade union. That, I think, has given us that longevity. It has given us that more secure funding, and it also has led to a more comprehensive workstream for us. What we were finding as a college in that time—of course it is before my time, but from reading—the environment in which nurses were working was a huge issue for the College. The division between the College being able to represent members and what was then the trade union was too far apart, so they became a trade union, so that they could act as an independent trade union representing nursing issues only and, doing that, look at the environment in which people work.
Dr Hunt: There are certainly some areas of crossover between the work of the College and the work of the Chartered Society, particularly in the fact that forensic science is a subset of policing. I realise of course that the College of Policing is looking much wider than that, but certainly some of the areas I have already alluded to—competence particularly, and the development of continual professional development and training and education services within the forensic sciences—could be seen as a crossover. I would hope, moving forward, that the College and the Society can work together to ensure that there is no duplication of those efforts. The fact that we are already established and moving on that would be something that could be left with the Chartered Society, and not particularly taken into the College of Policing.
Q100 Chair: Janet Davies, why are you helping? Why is your organisation helping the College of Policing on education? Surely they should be doing this themselves. What is it that you are giving them?
Janet Davies: They are doing it themselves. I think that we can help because of our history and because we have some advice. We have been very impressed with the College of Policing. In fact, one of the reasons we got in touch in the first place, I think, was because—
Q101 Chair: You got in touch with them, or they got in touch with you?
Janet Davies: No, we employed a former member of their staff.
Chair: Oh, right.
Janet Davies: Like anything else, it was very fascinating, what she was telling about what was happening with the College of Policing. We have lots of areas of joint interest.
Q102 Chair: So you decided to ring up and help them after you heard?
Janet Davies: They help us as well. It is a two-way thing, so I would hardly like to say it is just going in and advising them. We do have someone sitting on their advisory board, but we have had some very productive joint meetings where we have areas of mutual interest, particularly in terms of setting standards.
Q103 Chair: Sure. Do you think they eventually want to become you?
Janet Davies: I do not know. You would have to ask them that. I think it is a good model. It is not a model that everybody agrees with. There can be tension between being a trade union and being a professional organisation. We feel, on the whole, it is better to be together than separate, but it is a model that I think people need to decide themselves.
Q104 Chair: One final question about immigration issues. The last time you were before us, we were told that there would be a crisis in nursing as a result of the immigration rules. Has that now eased?
Janet Davies: Yes, because nurses are now on the shortage list, so that decision has been made. It has been a very, very helpful decision, and it has made things much better for organisations.
Chair: It was one of our recommendations. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming in here. If there is anything that we have missed that you think would be helpful, especially with regards to the budgets and other issues, please do write to us.
Janet Davies: I will send that information, yes.
Chair: But we are very grateful indeed. Thank you very much.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Chief Constable Alex Marshall, CEO and Accounting Officer, College of Policing, and Rachel Tuffin, Director of Research, Knowledge and Education, College of Policing, gave evidence.
Q105 Chair: In addition to the declaration of interests that we heard earlier, Mr Marshall and Ms Tuffin, Mr Jayawardena wishes to declare an interest.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Perhaps for clarity, Mr Marshall used to be Chief Constable of Hampshire Constabulary while I served as a local councillor.
Chair: Let us begin. Mr Marshall, thank you very much for coming back. As you know, you come to the table in front of friends; we are great supporters of the College of Policing, so if we sound a little robust in our questions, it is not because we do not like you or the organisation. We want to try to make sure that it is even better than it is now. Certainly from the little opinion poll that I conducted on the way over from the Chamber, your recognition—not your personal recognition, which of course I am sure is very high, but the recognition of the College—has improved, though not to a huge extent, but certainly people know what you are. A number of the officers I spoke to do not quite know what you are doing or how you can help them, but it is certainly better than before. Are you finding that now? Are people more aware of the existence of the College?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, it is increasing, and I am glad to hear your survey was more successful than the last time you conducted it. Thank you for your words at the beginning, Chair.
Since we were last before the Committee, we have launched membership for people who work in policing, and we attracted an initial 3,000-plus members who have helped us understand more about what people in policing want from us. I am really pleased that those 3,000 people come from every force in the country, police officers and police staff of every rank and grade, so it is a good representation. That has helped us build our understanding of what they want from us, and I am sure Rachel would be happy to say more.
Chair: We are coming on to that.
Chief Constable Marshall: So I would agree with your characterisation that it is an improving, building picture, but we still have a long way to go to connect well with our members.
Q106 Chair: Since you mention membership—I think we are not covering it later, though we are talking about recruitment and representation—let me put to you one of the points made by one of the officers that I met coming over. He is very worried that he currently pays his subscription to the Police Federation. It is a free membership at the moment with you, isn’t it?
Chief Constable Marshall: Correct.
Chair: But in your desire to become independent—we would all like to see you as being independent—you might start charging a fee. Can you reassure this Committee that it is not your intention to charge a fee for membership?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes. We declared in our five-year strategy that we have no plans to charge for membership up to 2018 and as long as we can afford not to. In our first few years we focused on putting in place the fundamentals of being a profession, introducing a code of ethics, introducing continuing professional development, being clearer about accreditation and looking at those high-risk areas for the public, such as mental health, child sexual exploitation, and stop and search, and we have not been pursuing that commercial agenda to try to drive up our income. I am happy to talk about the income we do bring in.
Chair: Yes, we are coming on to that.
Chief Constable Marshall: At the moment there are no plans to charge for membership, but it is always interesting to listen to other professional bodies and how their funding operates and how that affects their independence.
Q107 Chair: Yes. I think ordinary PCs do not want to be in a position where they spend their money on the Police Federation, which is spending money at the moment on lots of lawyers—that is 85% of their budget this year—and then have to pay you a fee. I think that is the concern, but that is very useful and helpful.
Some very quick questions and answers: your budget is £76 million, but you are going to take a cut, so it is going to be a tough year for you. At a time when the Home Secretary has created you—you are one of her great legacy things from the last six years; she is very proud of the College—she is taking away some of your budget. Is that going to create problems for you?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes.
Q108 Chair: How much are you losing?
Chief Constable Marshall: The budget pressures for next year are about £8 million. I need to find around £8 million. Not all of that is a reduction in grant in aid. Everyone will be aware of the changes in National Insurance and pay rises and other matters that affect our budget. So the pressure on our budget is about £8 million, and I have been working with all the senior leaders in the College and people across the profession to work out how we focus on our priorities, and how we can reduce our spend by that amount.
Q109 Chair: Does that mean you will now have to charge police forces more if they send their people to you for training? Your budget has been cut. You have to find £8 million. The £8 million has to be found from those people who come to the College, from police chiefs who themselves are facing a budget cut. This is going to be a big problem, is it not?
Chief Constable Marshall: It is very tough. We do charge for some of the training delivery that we provide. We allow other training to take place without charging because it might be so high-risk for the public, or so specialist, that we think that is a good use of public money. We do have an issue on charging, in that our prices are controlled through Treasury and other rules, so the net effect of that for the training that I provide at the moment is that we lose about £12 million, net, in providing that training.
Q110 Chair: Because of the Treasury rules?
Chief Constable Marshall: Because of the rules.
Chair: So the Home Office is cutting you by £8 million, but the rules mean that it is going to be £12 million?
Chief Constable Marshall: I do not have the freedom to charge the prices that I would wish for the training that we deliver. Yes.
Q111 Chair: How many officers undertook online training with the College last year?
Chief Constable Marshall: All officers who work in England and Wales are now registered for online training, and pretty much all of them have done some form of online training in the last 12 months.
Rachel Tuffin: Sorry, if I may, Chair, I think about 130,000 courses are completed each month.
Q112 Chair: They pay for that, presumably? They do not? It is free?
Chief Constable Marshall: No, we provide that to them.
Chair: That bit is free.
Rachel Tuffin: Yes. Interestingly—you were speaking earlier about recognition—I think probably one of the issues is that some of the services that are already provided by the College they do not think of as things that are membership benefits, but they are, so in the future we will be packaging those up in such a way that when they come through on to College services, they will go through a platform and will know that they are about to access their member benefits, working with us in the College.
Q113 Chair: The use of the word “desperate” is my word, not yours, but I would imagine you are desperate to be independent—to be like the Royal College of Nursing or the other Royal Colleges in the UK; to be able to be free of Treasury rules and to charge what you want, but also to provide the services that you need. Is that right? Would you like to be independent?
Chief Constable Marshall: I would like a higher degree of independence. There are some important issues where our role is not the same as all other professional bodies. For example, as well as knowledge and research and the educational elements of what we do, we set standards in policing, both standards for police forces and for individuals, which makes us different from some other professional bodies. You might expect that the Home Office and the Home Secretary, with her responsibility for the safety of the citizen, may well want an involvement in standard-setting that protects the citizen, and therefore it might well be appropriate to have Government funding for that element of what we do. The Home Secretary has declared that we should operate independently, but you will understand there are rules that still constrain us.
Q114 Chair: In his valedictory evidence to this Committee, Hugh Orde said that the College would only get credibility once it is independent. Do you agree with Sir Hugh?
Chief Constable Marshall: I think a greater degree of independence gives us a greater degree of credibility, yes.
Rachel Tuffin: Again, if I might, we also act as a What Works Centre, part of the What Works network. One of the things we do there is provide a very neutral and rigorous standard of evidence through reviewing all of the crime reduction evidence that is available and publishing that on a toolkit. Some of the work that we do there is funded with the Higher Education Funding Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, so we do have other sources of funding. We work in partnership with them and that helps us to maintain our independence.
Q115 Chair: Mr Umunna will question you later, surgically, with his surgical gloves, on the issue of diversity, but let me put to you evidence that we heard last week, which very much surprised us, from the National Black Police Association, who said that you did not consult them before you published your strategy on diversity. Bearing in mind this is a big issue for this Committee, and indeed the Home Secretary, who in her last speech to the Federation named and shamed those forces that did not have BAME officers—she is obviously very, very keen on this issue as well—why did you not consult either the Muslim Police Association or the Black Police Association?
Chief Constable Marshall: In all our programmes of work that are around BAME representation and progression, we worked with the National Black Police Association. They have been very supportive of what we do. A good example would be—
Q116 Chair: Yes, but that is not what they have said to us last week. I am sure you have looked at the evidence session last week.
Chief Constable Marshall: Indeed I have, sir.
Q117 Chair: You might have been seeing it live. They were absolutely surprised, and we were shocked, that you did not want to consult the National Black Police Association over this issue.
Chief Constable Marshall: So much do I want to consult them, Chair, that 12 months ago we recruited the Vice-President of the Black Police Association, Irene Afful, Detective Inspector, and she has been working with us for the last 12 months on our programmes.
Q118 Chair: That is very good, but she did not consult them. The point is if you have a diversity strategy and you are the College of Policing and this is one of your key issues, surely you would want to consult them. Whether you have recruited someone a year ago to do this job is not the same. I am talking about process here—we will come to numbers later on—but the process of your consultation was a matter that caused us enormous concern last week. Do you accept that it was a mistake not to consult them?
Chief Constable Marshall: In hearing the evidence last week, it tells me that I need to redouble my efforts to communicate well what we are doing. I can reassure the Committee that in all of our major programmes, including the education programme that you have been talking about, our BAME progression programme towards 2018, our work developing action plans with every single force in the country to try to improve the employer’s role in recruiting more people from diverse backgrounds, we have worked with the BPA.
Q119 Chair: Yes, but you did not consult them over the diversity strategy.
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, I believe they have been involved in all of our—
Q120 Chair: They told us in evidence last week that they were not consulted, and I said I would put it to you. I just wanted to clarify.
Rachel Tuffin: You mentioned process, and perhaps there is a point of process here. When we sent out our police education qualifications framework consultation formally, a letter went out to both organisations from the chief executive offering them to contribute and also bilateral meetings if they chose. I suspect there may be a point in the process that we reach where that is what happens, but certainly in terms of the development of our strategies in diversity, it is an ongoing thing. We are always trying to do more. There may be a specific publication point where we can consult.
Q121 Chair: Ms Tuffin, after last week’s evidence, I think it is better that you sit around with a table with them and involve them in your process on diversity.
Rachel Tuffin: Oh, definitely, yes. Absolutely, and we are always happy to do more.
Q122 Chair: A final question from me on procurement. When I came to visit the College, I was very impressed with what I saw. We had a presentation about the cameras that police officers now wear. I was very concerned to be told that a number of different forces had different types of cameras. We thought this was very strange in this day and age, when procurement and getting value for money is very important, that different police forces were buying different sorts of cameras and the contracts were entered at different times. What can you do to make sure that there is some consistency in this?
Chief Constable Marshall: We set the standards about how you should use the cameras and we have done what we think is some very important research about what benefit you get from using body-worn video and whether it is a good use of public money. In terms of procurement and the technical standards, that is not an area that the College is involved in.
Q123 Chair: Would you like to be?
Chief Constable Marshall: No.
Q124 Mr David Winnick: In some respects this touches on what the Chair asked previous witnesses at the beginning of the session. Mr Marshall, if we went around this building, where obviously, for necessary reasons, there are many police officers, and said to them, “What do you know about the College of Policing?” what percentage of police officers do you think would respond positively, in the sense of knowing of your existence as an organisation?
Chief Constable Marshall: I spoke to them on my way in today as well.
Mr David Winnick: They all knew about it, obviously, then; 100%.
Chief Constable Marshall: Funnily enough, Chair, they were very well aware of the College of Policing. They have all had contact with the College through the training and learning that they have done, and some of them are aware that we are developing an evidence base in policing and we are now becoming the place to go to look for job adverts and to help with their careers and get knowledge and information, so they are beginning to improve their understanding. I would say at the moment probably half of them would understand more about the College. They would all have had contact through their learning. [Interruption.]
Chair: I am afraid on that point, I am going to adjourn the Committee. There is a vote in the House and we will return as soon as we are quorate. Sorry about this. Thank you.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
On resuming—
Chair: Let us continue. We are back in session. Mr Winnick.
Q125 Mr David Winnick: Mr Marshall, you are therefore pretty satisfied that your organisation is now known among police officers; you are more satisfied than previously, presumably—than the last time you appeared before us?
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, I think we are making progress with recognition from our members. We have learned a lot from the first 3,000 people who have joined as members. We now have 57,000 people in policing on the College of Policing online communities, which is more than a quarter of everybody who works in policing. But no, I still think we have a long way to go for people who work in policing to recognise what we are offering. We are making progress, but we have a long way to go.
Q126 Mr David Winnick: We have noted that—a long way to go—and no doubt when you next appear before us, we will ask you further questions, to pursue that particular view, because it is pretty obvious that if you are the College of Policing, then those who are doing the policing day in, day out, should know about you and have views accordingly.
The last two witnesses were very pleased that they were self-financing, independent of the Government. That is far from the position as far as your organisation is concerned. You receive some £75 million from central Government.
Chief Constable Marshall: I think it is more like about £65 million for this year, Chair.
Q127 Mr David Winnick: We will not argue too much about the £10 million, but our briefing states more like £74 million or £75 million. Would you give us a precise figure or write to us?
Chief Constable Marshall: I am happy to write in with the full detail, but at the moment our total budget is around £63 million or £65 million, of which £39 million comes from Government grant in aid. We bring in about £21 million in income from the training and other services that we provide, and we get about £3 million in special grants for individual projects.
Q128 Mr David Winnick: Clearly far from independent from Government. Is it the aim at some stage to be like the other two organisations?
Chief Constable Marshall: We wish to pursue royal charter status in the future—assuming my board would support me with that, and I believe that they would—and that would give us a greater degree of independence. It was very interesting listening to the last two witnesses. I think in the Royal College of Nursing, it was about 14 years from when they started to when they became a Royal College, and if I heard correctly in the other example it was about 50 years before a Royal College was established. We know we need to achieve certain things to get there, and I know Rachel has been looking at some of those requirements. It would maybe be helpful if Rachel explains that.
Q129 Mr David Winnick: It is a firm aim of the College, however long it takes, to be independent?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, but the caveat I would bring in is my previous comment about our role, which is different from other professional bodies in setting standards and some of the research work that we do. In other professional bodies, those are not things that members would normally be paying for. They would not normally pay for the standards being set for their employer by an organisation. They would normally pay for their member services, so we are different in that regard.
Rachel Tuffin: That might move. I think one of our colleagues mentioned being commissioned to do certain pieces of work and that would be more the relationship. It is interesting that our members want us to be an independent authoritative voice, and on the authoritative element, we are certainly strongly progressing in that area. The independent element is slightly different at this point. I was just thinking about how we would make sure that people understand how we progress to full independence. One of the issues there will be about them feeling a sense of ownership of our organisation, so that will be an important thing for us to achieve.
Q130 Mr David Winnick: So one could say, with that reservation, that the overall aim is independence?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes.
Q131 Mr David Winnick: With that reservation, which you have both explained very clearly. The last question that will come from me is the criticism that has been made that you have been advising places around the globe, certainly Saudi Arabia, whose record on civil rights and dignity is so obnoxious to so many of us. My colleague, Ann Clwyd, who chairs the all-party parliamentary human rights group, and who has an outstanding record on human rights, has said the College needs to be more open about its activities before the public can decide whether the training is contributing or not to serious human rights violations in Saudi Arabia. Why do you have a connection with a country like Saudi Arabia?
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, we are very proud of the British brand of policing. We think our brand of policing has a lot to offer around the world, and we have a lot to learn from other places in the world. In response to that issue about transparency, we have placed on our website the list of countries that we engage with, why we engage with them and the process we go through, including getting permission and authority from the Foreign Office before we engage with other countries.
Q132 Mr David Winnick: Saudi Arabia in any possible list of human rights violations would be near the top: the executions that occur on a daily basis; the extremist interpretation of Islam, which some people consider inspires terrorism around the world, although disassociated by the Saudi Arabian authoritie; the fact that women have absolutely no rights—I think more recently they have had some voting rights of the most limited kind, but they cannot go out without being accompanied by a male—everything that is obnoxious to the standards of our country that you rightly mention, Mr Marshall. Why on earth be associated with such a dictatorship?
Chief Constable Marshall: We think the British model of policing is one that we should be happy to explain to others around the world. It is one we should be promoting, and with it comes the values that we hold dear. In all of our training we adhere to the code of ethics that we have published, and we are very concerned about human rights. We very much want to work internationally, and we do think other countries might benefit from our model.
Q133 Mr David Winnick: Now, Mr Marshall, let us be realistic. Do you think for one moment the Saudi Arabian authorities are going to be influenced by the College of Policing coming from the United Kingdom—that they are going to say, “Oh, look at the way they do things in the United Kingdom. We must see how we can change our ways”? You do not really believe that for one moment. You understand these matters.
Chief Constable Marshall: Wherever we work in the world, people are very interested in the British model of policing, and we are very proud of it and want to project what we do and the values we hold in doing that.
Q134 Mr David Winnick: Tell us how it has changed by the links with Saudi Arabia.
Chief Constable Marshall: In all the countries we go to, we help to develop the police there and we learn from other places.
Q135 Mr David Winnick: North Korea? What about North Korea? Why stop at Saudi Arabia? Not to mention other countries.
Chief Constable Marshall: We publish a list of countries that we engage with and the reasons and the process we go through.
Q136 Chair: Indeed. Thank you very much, Mr Winnick. Just for the record, what is the amount of income that you generate from the international work? Of course this Committee in the past has said that it wants you to do international work, obviously subject to what Mr Winnick has correctly raised. How much of the £21 million income comes from—
Chief Constable Marshall: Over the last two years, the latest figure I have is about £8 million from all of our international work.
Q137 Chair: Since he has raised Saudi Arabia, and Mr Burrowes now also wants to come in on this, what was the value of that contract?
Chief Constable Marshall: I am not at liberty to talk about individual contracts with individual countries, Chair.
Q138 Chair: The reason is?
Chief Constable Marshall: For reasons of commercial confidentiality and for security.
Q139 Chair: Is security a reason for not telling us how much you gained from a particular contract?
Chief Constable Marshall: From getting into those details, yes.
Q140 Chair: Who has told you this?
Chief Constable Marshall: We seek permission from the Foreign Office. We therefore do not reveal individual commercial contracts.
Q141 Chair: Who has told you not to do that?
Chief Constable Marshall: That is the advice we received from the Foreign Office.
Q142 Chair: From the Foreign Office?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes.
Chair: Right, we will write to the Foreign Secretary to ask why he has given you that advice. It sounds very strange, when we want you to do more of this stuff. We are very clear that we think that it is good that you should be doing international work, but for the Foreign Office to tell you not to tell Parliament how much you get on contracts is very strange. We will write to them. You have told us where to write to. Were there any women on that delegation to Saudi Arabia?
Chief Constable Marshall: I am not aware of any specific details around that, Chair.
Q143 Chair: Okay. Could you write to us about that? That would be helpful.
Chief Constable Marshall: I would be happy to.
Q144 Mr David Burrowes: Which Government Departments sit on the International Policing Assistance Board that undertakes the approval process?
Chief Constable Marshall: The Foreign Office, DfID, the Home Office, policing and others.
Q145 Mr David Burrowes: Does the Ministry of Justice ever sit on that?
Chief Constable Marshall: I would have to check the detail and send it in. It is not a committee I personally attend. I have people who attend on my behalf.
Q146 Mr David Burrowes: It is just that with the Ministry of Justice pulling out of the £5.9 million prisons deal in relation to Saudi Arabia—we are conscious of the human rights concerns—it would be good to know whether they are involved or were involved in the decision-making process in relation to the training contract with Saudi Arabia.
Chief Constable Marshall: I would be happy to provide that, Chair.
Q147 Mr David Burrowes: Have there been any applications for training refused by the IPAB?
Chief Constable Marshall: I do not attend that particular meeting. I have somebody who leads my international work who does attend, so I would be happy to provide the detail of how our requests progress. I think we have published on our website some of the details around that.
Q148 Mr David Burrowes: You are not aware of any refusal of any applications?
Chief Constable Marshall: No.
Chair: The Committee has said previously we welcome the work you do internationally—we agree absolutely with what you have said about the British brand of policing; it is very well respected all over the world—subject to what Mr Winnick has said; he has raised very important issues. This Committee is concerned about where we do our work, so if you could write to us about Saudi Arabia in particular, that would be very helpful. Just to clarify, you are not doing any work with North Korea, because Mr Winnick raised North Korea?
Chief Constable Marshall: No.
Q149 Chair: Okay. In respect of Tunisia, where British citizens were murdered exactly a year ago, there has been a security problem there. Of course the Government has banned British citizens from going there, which has caused a massive problem for the Tunisian economy. Many hotels—95% of them—in the tourist areas of Hammamet and Sousse have closed as a result of the decision of the British Government. Have you been involved in trying to help the Tunisians get their security up to a level at which we would find it acceptable to send British citizens back? Are you involved in any way with that?
Chief Constable Marshall: I do not think we have been involved since that incident, Chair, but I will check. We have a long list of countries that we engage with—I think it is more than 40—so I will check that.
Q150 Chair: Do you see that work increasing in the future?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes.
Q151 Chair: That being a useful source of income to allow you to do more work in this country, rather like overseas students coming here helping us keep down the costs of students in this country? International work is very important?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, we see a lot of interest in the British brand of policing as well as the work of the College of Policing. People often refer to our website and the fact that we set clear standards. We are very open in the way we publish our work and we make it available to the public, and there does seem to be an appetite in many countries for buying into that. We work with Andy Marsh, who is the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset, who leads on international matters for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to make sure that we are lined up with the operational deployments.
Chair: Sure. James Berry and then Stuart McDonald. Let us get back to Britain.
Q152 James Berry: Chief Constable Marshall, you mentioned Royal College status. As part of gaining Royal College status and operating as a Royal College, am I right that there would be two things you would need in particular? First would be the power to hold a register, and to admit people to that register if they have met the standards, and to strike them off the register; that would be in addition to the barred list you already administer. The second would be to extend the scope of your operations from setting standards for police officers to police staff as well, because of the civilianised nature of quite a lot of police work at the moment.
Chief Constable Marshall: In terms of Royal Charter status, perhaps I will let Rachel explain some of the requirements that we understand from that, but certainly the two areas you describe hold us back in our work. We do have in the Bill going through Parliament the authority to hold a list of people who have been dismissed from policing or who have left pending a gross misconduct hearing. We do not have the legal power to hold a register of people who work in policing, all the good people in policing; the vast majority are doing a very good job, working hard and building up their skills. No, we do not have that legal power to hold a register at the moment. Particularly in high risk areas for the public—the police use of firearms or investigating child abuse might be two examples—we would like to pursue the ability to maintain a register or licence to practice of the type you describe.
The second issue you raise relates to police staff. I think the Bill refers to them as “civilian staff”. It is not a term we would normally use in policing. Many police teams now are mixed between police officers and police staff. A murder investigation might be a good example, where you would get warranted police officers and police staff investigators. We can set regulations for the police officers. We do not have the same authority over police staff. With the police workforce changing, that does seem to be an anomaly.
Q153 James Berry: If you were given those two powers in the course of this Parliament, would you be able to handle them?
Chief Constable Marshall: In terms of police staff, definitely, because that is an area where we are already involved with police officers, and we would focus on the high risk areas first.
In terms of creating a register, I think that is a slightly longer-term aim, something that would come in two or three years’ time. If this Parliament lasts five years, then, yes.
Q154 James Berry: It seems to me that this Home Secretary and this Government has a very bold reforming agenda in the police area, and it would be a shame to conclude this Parliament without giving you those two important powers and getting you very much along the way to Royal College status, because 14 years seems like an awfully long time to wait when you are doing such a good job.
Rachel Tuffin: Especially in an action-oriented culture like policing, yes. Just to add on the Royal Charter elements, it fits with the progression. They talk about 5,000 members as a figure to aim for—we have 3,300 registered at the moment, but that is a next step—and also a track record of achievement. That is a bit of a subjective judgment, but I think we would also want to see a strong track record for ourselves in order to be able to take forward the royal charter.
Q155 Stuart C. McDonald: Two quick questions. First of all, governance. Mr Marshall, when the College last paid this Committee a visit, Dame Shirley Pearce identified a number of skills gaps at board level, including legal knowledge, educational knowledge and understanding how professional bodies work. Has it been possible to plug those gaps and, if so, how?
Chief Constable Marshall: Since the last Committee, there has been one vacancy on the board for an independent member, and that was widely publicised. I think about 40 people applied and the person selected does fit some of those skills gaps on the board. I am sure if Dame Shirley was here she would say that as we keep developing the board and we appoint members in the future there are still areas, particularly in education and professional-body background, that we would wish to fill.
Q156 Stuart C. McDonald: Okay, so progress but still—
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes.
Q157 Stuart C. McDonald: Secondly, going back to financing again, in the recent business plan I think six risks were identified, including one that was a risk of demand for college services outstripping your capacity. That is going to be affected by budget cuts as well. Are you at a point now where you are going to have to be boxing clever about what exactly the police college does? What sort of things are you not going to be able to do that forces might want you to do?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, we are absolutely in the middle of that process now. There is a huge demand, a great ambition, for the college doing all sorts of things from all sorts of parties within policing. We have to focus on the priorities that we can deliver around knowledge, setting educational requirements in policing and setting the right standards. Really the way we are addressing it in this year’s business plan, which will go to my board next week, is to be absolutely clear where we are prioritising, which are the highest-risk areas for the public, and where do we best support our members in policing, particularly at the frontline of policing, in being able to do their jobs.
Rachel Tuffin: It is probably worth saying that we try to provide a minimum offer for most things. So for the online communities, if you are an airport police commander or somebody who works in wildlife crime, you can be part of an online community, which means you can share practice. Then in areas where there is a real common interest across policing and there is a strong public interest and appetite—domestic abuse, stop and search, mental health—that is where the college would have the focused programme where we do everything all the way through to piloting the training, and testing the impact on officers and staff. So there is a sort of graduation.
The next step also for us is that a lot of our members are really keen to get involved in building the profession, to help us. Some of them are doing research, reviewing research, helping to get that embedded. I think that is a unique part of our model—that we are a professional body and we are also a work centre. When we connect those two things together, that is really powerful. There is a great example of a Metropolitan Police officer who has just finished his PhD looking at property marking and its impact on burglary; happily it does have a positive impact on burglary. So we are really keen to capitalise on that unique element. That means our members are building the college as well, which is terrific.
Q158 Stuart C. McDonald: Thank you. One final question. What sort of working relationship do you have with the Police Scotland College, Tulliallan, and would you say that they have an easier job operating as one central college on behalf of one single police force?
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, I am not an expert in the Scottish environment, so I am not sure I can comment on whether their job is easier, but we have a very good relationship with them. A good example would be when we hold the strategic command course, which is the course for people going into chief officer roles in policing. It is in three modules and this year we held one of the modules at Tulliallan and out in Scottish communities, working in Scotland, working with local authorities in Scotland, with politicians and support organisations, so we have a good relationship. I have a good relationship with Phil Gormley, the Chief Constable in Police Scotland, and they do use many of the standards that we set, albeit that they are separate, as you well understand, from us and have their own governance.
Rachel Tuffin: I get to be counted as an international member on the Scottish Institute for Policing Research advisory board.
Q159 Chair: The point that Mr McDonald raises is very important. We are not suggesting you should have your own headquarters like Tulliallan, which is extraordinarily attractive, but there you have one set of standards, you have one guidance. There is one college for the whole of Scotland, whereas here people join local police forces and there is an inconsistency. You are trying to bring this consistency through your guidance. It must be an attractive model. I know you are not an expert on it; Phil Gormley is, and he will be coming to give evidence to us, but it is very attractive, is it not, to be able to deal with one set of standards and one set of guidance for all recruits?
Chief Constable Marshall: So for recruits joining policing in England and Wales we publish the standards for them and we publish the curriculum for people becoming police officers. As you have heard we are making proposals about how that might be different in the future, and new forms of entry through a higher level apprenticeship scheme or graduate entry. So we do set the standards. There is only one standard for joining the police in England and Wales and we do set the initial curriculum. The difference is in the Scottish Police College, and indeed it is a very fine building and environment, all the new recruits pass through the same centre, whereas in England and Wales police forces tend to group together to train the recruits in different parts of the country to the standards we set.
Rachel Tuffin: There is an interesting balance there, I think, between the experiences that they have in their local community and what they do in the training college. Certainly some of the moves in policing in England and Wales over the past 20 years have been about making sure that people also have a strong local experience. That was part of the reason for regionalising their training.
Q160 Chair: Sure, but they do that in Scotland. After they go through the college they might end up in the Outer Hebrides as well as in Mr McDonald’s constituency of Glasgow. They are not excluded from going to communities in Scotland, are they?
Rachel Tuffin: No. It is a very strong part of the thread of training, I suppose is what I am saying, in the current model.
Q161 Mr Chuka Umunna: I think you will have heard the questioning, because I think you were in the room, posed by me to the Police Federation and the Police Superintendents Association about the use of stop and search. I quoted the figures from the recent HMIC report, which basically found 32 of our 43 police forces failing to use stop and search powers effectively. In light of the latest report do you think we have a problem in terms of how we educate our police officers to use their stop and search powers?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes. I think we have a problem with stop and search, full stop, and we have a problem in making sure we equip frontline officers to carry out that important function in the right way.
We are now piloting different approaches to educating people in stop and search. Rachel might want to say more about that. We have seen improvements in most parts of the country in terms of stopping fewer people and having more success in doing it, but we know that it is the quality of that encounter, the way the stop and search is carried out, that is so important. We are part of the best use of stop and search scheme work, but we are piloting new approaches to educating frontline people, who are the ones who have to carry out that function and maintain the confidence to approach people.
Q162 Mr Chuka Umunna: Essentially this is an issue of education as well as an issue in terms of how forces are led and run?
Chief Constable Marshall: It is both.
Q163 Mr Chuka Umunna: I have read about the scheme that you are piloting with the Equality and Human Rights Commission that seeks to look at the unconscious bias of officers, Ms Tuffin, in an attempt to cut down on the abuse of these powers. Just before you perhaps give a bit more detail about that, do I take it, that you believe unconscious bias is a problem that is fuelling the misuse of these powers?
Rachel Tuffin: If we look at what that evidence suggests, unconscious bias is something that we all face; we all have unconscious bias, and the issue is about our awareness of that and how we ensure that we are avoiding unconscious bias playing out in our actions.
Q164 Mr Chuka Umunna: What does that mean in the context of stop and search where, for example, if you are a person of an African-Caribbean background you are more than 17 times more likely to be stopped and searched in Dorset, say? Can you just for the record explain what unconscious bias may be in that scenario? What are you getting at?
Rachel Tuffin: I would not comment on a specific scenario in that way. I would say there are some layers in there around how forces use the powers. I think you put it well there. There is an element around how the intelligence is analysed, and how forces use that intelligence to think at force level about where there might be crime and antisocial behaviour issues and therefore where they might be thinking about use of hotspots policing and those kinds of things. That can lead to certain areas where people will concentrate their policing activity, but then for the individual use of the power that will be down to the individual officer in that circumstance feeling that there are grounds to proceed. So that is down to the individual’s decision-making at that point.
Just going back to the best use of stop and search—
Q165 Mr Chuka Umunna: Just a moment. I am going to cut you there. On the individual’s use of the power of stop and search, how would unconscious bias impact?
Rachel Tuffin: What I was trying to say is that what we are doing with the training and with the evidence review is to say, “How can you be aware that that might influence your actions and therefore counter it so that it does not affect what you do in terms of practice?” That is something we can all do.
Q166 Mr Chuka Umunna: Just so I am clear, presumably the reason you are doing this piece of work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission is because you as an organisation believe that unconscious bias on the part of officers is leading to certain groups being disproportionately stopped and searched when they should not be?
Rachel Tuffin: I would say what we want to do is to remove that possibility from being there in the minds of others.
Q167 Mr Chuka Umunna: What I am trying to get to the bottom of is, Ms Tuffin, is it or is it not a factor in the disproportionate stop and search of, for example, black people?
Rachel Tuffin: It is a really good question, but if you look at the research evidence there is to date it does not give you the final answer on something like that, because it cannot really give you that answer. What it can tell you is what all the structural factors might be, the institutional ones and all the things that may be playing a part. There are all sorts of issues about—
Q168 Mr Chuka Umunna: Let me put it another way. I think you know what I am getting at here, but I think you are being terribly diplomatic and avoiding, maybe, The Daily Mail or whatever misquoting you. Presumably if unconscious bias was not a factor in the way in which individual police officers carry out stop and search of black people in this country, you would not be doing this piece of work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Rachel Tuffin: It has been raised as an issue—has it not?—in the past that people feel that it could be happening. What we are trying to do is make sure through this work that it is not an issue, that people would feel that officers are doing all the things necessary including raising their own self-awareness, which I am sure we can all do, that when they are carrying out their practice they are doing it with all of the right Peelian principles, if you like: friendship, courtesy and using the grounds appropriately.
Q169 Mr Chuka Umunna: Why can you not just say to me that unconscious bias clearly plays a part, and you want to make sure that it does not play a part in the decision-making of individual police officers? I tell you, among most people in the African-Caribbean, the different diverse black communities in this country, for them that is just fact. I find it odd that you, as the College of Policing, particularly given this is a really positive thing, I am inviting you to tell a good news story here, will not just say there is a problem with unconscious bias and in the education of police officers you are seeking to address what is clearly a problem?
Rachel Tuffin: I think because you cannot see inside individual people’s heads when they are making the decision, and the research evidence does not take us all that way, so the research evidence would always be something that I would want to point back to. I genuinely think of this as a preventive kind of approach. That is the approach we try to take. I do not think I could say any further than that. As I say, you cannot see inside individual people’s heads.
Q170 Mr Chuka Umunna: Was it not, in a way, one of the findings of the Macpherson inquiry carried out by Macpherson in the wake of the—
Rachel Tuffin: They talked about institutional racism, did they not?
Chair: Order. We cannot take a note of this if people talk across each other.
Rachel Tuffin: Apologies.
Chair: It is not a criticism, it is just easier. It is not a debate; it is a question and answer session. Yes, Mr Umunna?
Q171 Mr Chuka Umunna: I am just posing the question that if Macpherson basically recognises all these years ago that there was this unconscious bias why cannot the College of Policing just be honest and open about it, that there is unconscious bias that plays a part in the disproportionate stop and search of black people in this country?
Chair: Would you like to answer that question?
Rachel Tuffin: I would, thank you, Chair. I think institutional racism was used as the term, and I think there was a very clear attempt to show that there was statistical evidence of structural issues within policing, which led to worse outcomes for people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. That was the concern, this term “institutional racism” that we are continually seeking to address; to remove those structural issues. So making sure that crime and antisocial behaviour data is analysed and used to inform policing patterns, all the way through to making sure that we look at promotion selection, recruitment, to try to bring in people from diverse backgrounds. That is also part of countering institutional racism. I think what they were saying was more about how structures can lead to overall worse outcomes, and we can all play our part, both in the structural sense and in individual decision-making, I think.
Q172 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Mr Marshall, you have heard what the Police Federation have to say. Why should new entrants to police forces have a degree level of qualification?
Chief Constable Marshall: Okay. In our proposals as they stand—we have just finished the consultation and we are about to analyse the returns from that—the first step, which is one that I heard Steve White ask for, is to accredit the people who currently work in policing, invite universities to accredit their prior learning. The nature of police work has changed substantially over the years. I joined in 1980. It is very, very different and much more complex than when I joined. So the first step is to allow universities to accredit people who currently work in policing for their prior learning and give them the opportunity to study for a police degree. Then we are proposing three forms of entry into the police: either a practical police degree of the type you have heard from nursing or teaching, where much of the time would be spent in a police force working with experienced police officers but some of it learning the complexities of online crime, forensics, public protection, all the complex things that have arisen in policing; or for people who have a degree to have a conversion across. We then alongside it would offer a higher apprenticeship entry into policing so that there is then another route for people who do not go and study a police degree first. The people on the apprenticeship scheme would still have to study to the same end point.
To finish that I would say that the complexity in policing and what we expect from people in policing, which includes courage, courtesy, compassion, empathy, wanting to serve your public, includes complex thinking, difficult decision-making and problem solving, which equates rather well to what is called level 6 in education.
Q173 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: You have stated in an interview with Police Professional earlier this year that forces are likely to offer bursaries, loans and scholarships to officers from disadvantaged backgrounds and, indeed, underrepresented groups as well. Can you clarify whether that would be a discretionary option for each police force, or would that be a statutory requirement as you move this forward?
Chief Constable Marshall: I have not made the final proposals to my board yet, because we have only just finished the consultation. I would not anticipate it being statutory, but chief constables who I have spoken to so far look to support underrepresented groups and make bursaries available. If you look at what the Metropolitan Police has done in terms of bringing its new recruits in and its big improvement in the number of people from diverse backgrounds joining the Metropolitan Police they have used bursaries and assisting people along the way, so there appears to be a lot of goodwill in that direction.
Q174 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Would the relatively low starting salary for police officers—between £19,000 and £22,000—be sufficient to attract the desired number of high calibre graduates? You termed it a conversion course much like people going into the law. How can you be sure that you are going to attract these people?
Chief Constable Marshall: £21,000, £22,000, £23,000 is roughly comparable with many other professions who offer a similar entry point, but I do think it is a concern. The starting salary could become an issue.
Rachel Tuffin: There may be also the opportunity to think about the other entry and exit points, so as we create greater flexibility there will be opportunities for people to come in and out at higher levels in policing, and that might also help with diversity.
Q175 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: A couple of points on the existing police officers. Do existing police officers have sufficient time to pursue the training that you envisage? What proportion of serving police officers already hold degree-level qualifications?
Chair: Just one second. We are expecting another vote and we do not want you to come back after the vote—I am sure you have other things to do—so if we can keep the dialogue as quick as possible, thank you.
Chief Constable Marshall: In terms of studying for a degree I would expect a university to accredit some of the training and learning and experience people already have, but they would then study for the degree in their own time. Many people in policing do that already, and there are already chief officers in policing saying they would allow some time for people to do that, so we would need to negotiate that with the employers. Quite a high proportion of people joining policing now already have a degree. I think it is 30% to 40% of people joining now.
Q176 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: If you could write to us subsequently that would be excellent.
One final question from me. I asked earlier about direct entry. What assessment has the College of Policing made of direct entry and do you think this is a good way to get that broad diversity, not only of background but of experience, into the police?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, we are pleased with the way it is going. 14 people have come in direct entry, superintendents, so far, of which three are BAME, for example. We do think that it is bringing in a different perspective. It is a very thorough 18-month programme before they can qualify and the first group is just about to reach that point. I have met them several times. They are a really good bunch and they are making a good impression wherever they are working, but the evaluation needs to be robust.
To follow that, I should say we are also introducing direct entry at inspector, and we have had fast track schemes for people to join and accelerate through. I am very pleased that on the fast-track scheme the Black Police Association have supported us in advertising that and we had a 20% success rate on the last one for BAME applicants for fast track, whereas we have only ever had 5% and I am very grateful for the support of the BPA in that.
Q177 Mr Ranil Jayawardena: Sorry, I had intended that to be my final question, but just on a point that Mr Marshall has raised around bringing people through, several of the college proposals have emphasised that need for officers to rise through. Are you confident that if you are encouraging people to take degrees but also saying degree-level entry is required that you are not going to disincentivise people from being sufficiently ambitious?
Chief Constable Marshall: If I understand the question then, no, I do not think so. Policing has many development opportunities other than promotion. We see an advanced practitioner, for example, for people who are experts in their field, being a way forward. People working at the front end of policing do a great job. It is a really interesting job and we do think it would be attractive.
Q178 Naz Shah: Ms Tuffin, I will ask a question and I would like a yes or a no answer, please. Do you accept that unconscious bias is a factor in overrepresentation of black people in stop and search? Just a yes or no, please. Just a yes or no.
Rachel Tuffin: I think given that it is—
Naz Shah: Sorry, I asked just for a yes or no.
Rachel Tuffin: Yes, given it is a factor in everybody’s decision-making.
Q179 Naz Shah: Thank you. Mr Marshall, could you answer the same question, please? Do you accept that unconscious bias is a factor in the overrepresentation of black people in the stop and search?
Chief Constable Marshall: It is likely to be.
Q180 Naz Shah: Yes, thank you. Okay, moving on. I have just looked at your leadership review, and it does not mention the 10 points. It does not mention diversity or gender or anything in there. Is there a particular reason? I find that pretty alarming.
Rachel Tuffin: Probably the focus and the final publication of the leadership review was a very deliberate one to change the mainstream culture. A lot of the work that we have been doing is about supporting, mentoring, specific programmes for people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in policing, but when you look at the research evidence on this that is great, and it is a good thing to do, but it is far from being enough. What you need to do is control the mainstream culture, change the mainstream culture, and that is a very strong focus in the leadership review.
Chief Constable Marshall: The leadership review does include sections that talk about the importance of having a diverse workforce.
Q181 Naz Shah: But in your 10 points here there is no mention of the word “diversity” and it smacks me, because last week when we heard evidence from Janet Hill from the Metropolitan Black Police Association, the evidence that was submitted to this Committee was in line with what the Macpherson review said many years ago: that you have to stop being black to be able to progress in the police force. There were concerns about when your leadership programme was developed, and the Chair has touched on this before, that they were not consulted on that programme. I understand you will be writing to us, but it really does concern me.
Given that we have had the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence, it seems to be a narrative that the police force does not adopt it as something to use to engage on the issue of leadership, and it would also appear to me that if I am right, what it feels like to me, is that the police force want to take black people, get them recruited, but not address the cultural issues, which are about prejudice among your ranks and among the police force. So you take black people into a room, let us fix them, let us give them some training courses—
Chair: Mr Marshall?
Chief Constable Marshall: I think I do agree with the essence of your argument, which is it is the overall culture of policing that has to be healthy and welcoming to people from completely diverse backgrounds, not just BAME but people who bring a different perspective and think in a different way.
Q182 Chair: What are you going to do to challenge that? That is her question.
Chief Constable Marshall: The very fact that we have changed the routes of entry into policing. We now have direct entry into policing to bring that different perspective in at senior levels. The fact that we are talking about a different way of joining the police in the first place. I do believe that having a practical police degree will attract different people who see the value in that degree. It was interesting to hear from the Royal College of Nursing that they improved the diversity in nursing when they introduced the degree entry.
Q183 Naz Shah: Your master classes that you do for BAME staff, or for BAME progression: I heard last week that it was only for BAME staff. Do you think that is the right approach?
Chief Constable Marshall: I am not sure I am aware. We run—
Q184 Chair: Do you do a master class, or has Naz Shah just invented a programme that you should be doing?
Chief Constable Marshall: I do not recognise the term. We run Releasing Potential and Realising Potential programmes. They are mainly aimed at women and BAME people in policing, and I am very pleased with the way they have progressed. Many of the people from those programmes have now been promoted.
Q185 Naz Shah: One of the things in this evidence bundle we have is that you do some work around CSE nationally, but your police forces are not prepared for the issue around forced marriages. That was something that was published last year, in December. What are you doing to address that? It seems to be quite a recurring theme of the discrepancies between police forces.
Rachel Tuffin: On forced marriage, that would be something where we will have an element within our practice guidance and standards that focuses specifically on that to help. I do not know whether that is something where we have a specific training package at the moment, but we can write to you about that. Usually what happens is where there is a new requirement, so the coercive control legislation would be a good example, we put together a package that officers can use to self-learn or they do briefings with their supervisors to focus on the key points of changes in legislation and make sure they have a good understanding of the sorts of issues they might be looking for.
Q186 Naz Shah: Why is there so much difference between the police forces, where you have one College of Policing and yet you have so much difference? I am assuming you teach them all the same. Why is there such a discrepancy?
Rachel Tuffin: We set the curriculum and we set the standards. We do not necessarily control what happens in delivery on the ground. So it may be that there is more concentration on some areas than others in different police forces.
Chief Constable Marshall: I do think you have hit on a really important issue, and it is an important issue for us. If we are publishing a standard in a high-risk area we want to know that it is happening in the same way across the country. We do think there is a flaw in that at the moment and one of the reasons we want to look towards having something like a licence to practice for people in those parts of police work is to make sure we support them with a high level of skills and the public know that they will see a consistent qualification and a consistent application of those skills in every part of the country.
Q187 Naz Shah: One final question. My passion is leadership and what I am hearing is that while you have just said that it is not your issue in terms of implementation surely there must be something wrong in your formula. Great leaders create more leaders, and if your leadership at that very top, where you are developing those leaders, are leaving the police college and not sharing that leadership and not sharing practices, and that is not filtering down for forces to work together, surely your formula must be broken somewhere. What are you doing to fix it?
Chief Constable Marshall: The one place where all the senior leaders come together is our strategic command course, and everyone who becomes a chief officer in policing in England and Wales has to pass the strategic command course. They do work collectively there. We do look at leadership in great detail, and ethics, and lots of other aspects of policing.
Naz Shah: It is clearly not working, though, is it?
Q188 Chair: It is not working, because you do not have a single BAME chief constable in the country, do you? After all these years, everyone coming before this Committee pleading that they are doing more, there is not a single black chief constable. Mike Fuller was the last one.
Chief Constable Marshall: When we started in 2013 we acknowledged that this was a serious issue and we have taken a five-year approach to that. We have taken people who were at sergeant, inspector and chief inspector level in 2013 and we have brought them through our programme. Some of those people are now chief superintendents, which means that they will be applying for the strategic command course next year.
Q189 Chair: But, Mr Marshall, it is never going to change because as we said in our last report, it is the police and crime commissioners who make the final choice as to who is going to be the chief constable. If you look at the West Midlands and you look at Greater Manchester, they were on very small shortlists. In the West Midlands case there was only one person on that shortlist for deputy commissioner. So how are we going to get people who go through all your courses, and with the best will in the world you are trying to get more BAME people in, how are you going to get them on to those shortlists to get them chosen, if at the end of the day there are shortlists of one? Do you agree with what is happening in terms of selection? Do you not think there should have been a wider choice? The chief constable of the West Midlands was obviously an exceptional candidate, but should there not be a better choice available?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes. I am very concerned where there is very little choice for the police and crime commissioner, although there have been examples in the last few months where five and six candidates have been going for a post. I would say Hampshire, Avon and Somerset are two examples recently.
Q190 Chair: Do people ring you up, as the top guy in the College of Policing, from for example Hampshire and say, “We are going to advertise for a chief constable. Do you have some people who you think we should put on the shortlist?”
Chief Constable Marshall: We do get asked.
Q191 Chair: By commissioners?
Chief Constable Marshall: Yes, sorry, by police and crime commissioners. Yes, we do. Not always, and they do not have to consult with us or ask us. We are publishing guidance for the appointment of chief officers. We will publish new guidance for police and crime commissioners but of course as you understand in law it is their appointment for them to make.
Q192 Chair: Would you like a power to be able to be consulted, as HMI used to be consulted in the past by the police boards?
Chief Constable Marshall: Our leadership review makes this point that we believe we should have an involvement in the process to provide professional advice around the candidates who are available.
Q193 Chair: That might result in more BAME people reaching the top of policing?
Chief Constable Marshall: The other part of that is making sure that more BAME people get through the selection process and the strategic command course to then be chief officers to put in front of police and crime commissioners. They cannot select a BAME chief constable if there are not people in the system coming through at deputy chief constable or assistant chief constable level.
Q194 Chair: Two quick final points. You might want to write to us, because they are big points. The first is Bernard Hogan-Howe, who is not on the board. We feel very strongly, and we have done in the past, he should be sitting on the board of the College of Policing as the commissioner, since he represents so many police officers. When it comes to education someone like Bernard Hogan-Howe talks about the Centre of Excellence at Cambridge, or other colleges that do criminology. They do not talk about the College of Policing. Would you like that to change in the future so when they talk about education they talk first and foremost about the college?
Chief Constable Marshall: In terms of education we would rather they were talking about universities working with the college. That is the approach we want to take, partnering with universities.
Q195 Chair: You want to take that lead. You do not want individual forces to go off and find their own partnerships with other universities, do you?
Chief Constable Marshall: We want to set the standard. We want to move to accrediting that learning, but the providers are likely to be universities and Sir Bernard has a very good relationship with the college. He works with us on many things, including developing continuing professional development for other chief constables. He has been very supportive in that area.
Q196 Chair: Would you like him to be on the board?
Chief Constable Marshall: When a vacancy arose recently for somebody who was a chief constable to be on the board as far as I know he did not apply for that vacancy, and he was not one of the chief constables who was proposed for selection.
Q197 Chair: Do you think that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner should apply for a vacancy? Should he not, as a representative of a quarter of all police officers in London, sit automatically on the board?
Chief Constable Marshall: The approach of appointment to our board is by a proper selection process where people need to apply and be selected. Of course Robin Wilkinson from the Metropolitan Police Management Board—
Q198 Chair: It sounds a bit like a club, does it not? Is it not self-selecting? Should not certain people by virtue of office sit on the board of the College of Policing?
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, would that not be more self-selecting? The fact that it is an open process where we invite people who are qualified to apply and then the board appoints them—
Q199 Chair: Who sits on this selection process?
Chief Constable Marshall: The Nominations and Remuneration Committee of the board.
Q200 Chair: Who does that consist of?
Chief Constable Marshall: Millie Banerjee is the chair of that.
Q201 Chair: Who else is on that?
Chief Constable Marshall: I have not been involved in board appointment processes. Of course the board hold me to account, so I am not involved in appointing.
Q202 Chair: Maybe again in this very long letter that you are going to send us with all these extra bits of information you can write and tell us about that, who is on the board.
Chief Constable Marshall: I would be happy to.
Q203 Chair: Finally, in respect of the Police Federation and yourselves, do you think that there may be a rivalry now between the Police Federation and the college? You are now getting your own membership base. It is free for police officers. They have to pay for their membership of the federation. Do you think at the end of the day when you start charging this might create two rival organisations?
Chief Constable Marshall: Other than for extra services we do not have any plans to charge our members, not for the knowledge they need to do their jobs. I do not see a conflict. They are a representative organisation. They are not a trade union but they are similar to a trade union. We are not. We are about knowledge, education and standards and I think in that sense we are quite different.
Q204 Chair: Mr Marshall, mark yourself and the college out of 10?
Chief Constable Marshall: Nine for effort and doing very well in progressing the main areas of helping people in policing improve their professional standards, with a very long way to go.
Chair: The job is not complete, but take it from this Committee, we admire the work that is being done. We may have had robust questions of you today, but that is what you would expect. Please carry on doing what you are doing and keep this Committee informed of all those developments. We are very grateful, and please pass on our thanks to all those who work at the College of Policing. It is always difficult with a new organisation when you are starting from scratch, but we hope that in our questions we have given you the areas that we believe are important for you to concentrate on.
Chief Constable Marshall: Chair, we welcome challenge. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you Mr Marshall, thank you Ms Tuffin. That concludes the session.
Oral evidence: College of Policing, HC 845 20