Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The Macpherson Report: Twenty Years On, HC 1829
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 July 2019.
Members present: Yvette Cooper (Chair); Rehman Chishti; Sir Christopher Chope; Janet Daby; Stephen Doughty; Kate Green; Tim Loughton; Stuart C. McDonald; Toby Perkins; Douglas Ross.
Questions 386–503
Witness
I: Cressida Dick CBE QPM, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witness: Cressida Dick CBE QPM.
Q386 Chair: I welcome everyone to this Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the 20th anniversary of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the Macpherson Report. Commissioner, welcome to the Committee. We are very grateful for your time and for giving evidence to us today.
Before we go into our evidence on the 20 years of progress from the Macpherson inquiry, I will raise with you an issue that has emerged today. You may have seen the extremely disturbing footage of a man being restrained on the Aberfeldy Estate in Poplar yesterday and appearing to sustain a head injury from handcuffs and appearing to suffer a fit as well. Do you have any response to give to that footage and will that case be referred to the IOPC?
Cressida Dick: I believe I have seen the footage you are talking about and the first thing I would say is that I am not going to sit here and judge in any way at all—you wouldn’t expect me to—what has happened there. Police officers work in difficult conditions and have to on occasion use force, and sometimes extreme force, to achieve their lawful objectives. Equally, I can see that very vivid videos can cause a huge amount of concern to members of the public. You would expect, and I can confirm that this has happened, that our professional standards department is reviewing the video as I speak. As far as I am aware, we have not had any complaint but of course if we do receive a complaint we will deal with that in our normal manner. One of the considerations, of course, for the professional standards department is whether a referral is appropriate or not, but I can’t go any further than that, I am afraid.
Q387 Chair: Given the alarm that the footage is already causing, I would urge you to look closely at a referral to the IOPC and to come back to us with any response as soon as you are able to.
Cressida Dick: I note your comment. Thank you, Chair.
Q388 Chair: Thank you. We are 20 years on from the Macpherson Report. Can you tell us your assessment of what progress the Met has made in tackling racism, both within the force and in the force’s relationship with the communities across London?
Cressida Dick: Thank you, Chair. Perhaps I could start, as I know many others have, by paying tribute to Baroness Lawrence and Mr Lawrence and everybody who loved Stephen who was killed, as we know, in an appalling racist murder. They subsequently, in my view, in many ways but not least through the inquiry, have changed our country so very much for the better. For me, the Stephen Lawrence public inquiry is undoubtedly the single most important influence on the police service that I now lead. To put that another way, Stephen’s murder and the subsequent inquiry I believe is the most important thing that has happened in the police service in the last 30-plus years.
The Met that I now lead is so much more transparent, so much more accountable, so much more responsive. It has so many more meaningful, deeper, better responsive relationships with London’s very, and increasingly so, diverse communities. We are so much better at dealing with racist incidents and crimes, and we may come back to that. We are so much better at dealing with homicides and we are so much better at working with bereaved families. I believe we are very, very much, I could sum it up by saying, in tune with London. It has affected every single aspect of our practice, strategy, policies and tactics in neighbourhoods, investigations, counterterrorism, public order and the way we work with our public.
But I would draw on a recent quote from Sir William himself who said there is obviously more to be done. He goes on to say, “But my feeling is that great steps have been taken in the right direction”. I agree, great steps have been taken in the right direction. I think he was referring more broadly than just the police, and of course the inquiry was about much more than just policing, but that is what I would say about the Met. Great steps have been taken in the right direction but I am not in any way complacent. The world has changed. There are different challenges and different issues for today’s police service and there is so much more to do, which is why I welcome the work of this Committee.
Q389 Chair: You do have a confidence gap, though, between many communities, particularly black Londoners and white Londoners. How do you measure that confidence gap? What is your measure of that confidence gap at the moment?
Cressida Dick: I think you will find some data on this in our written submission that we sent in in March. We have for many, many, many years done—and now it is our police and crime commissioner who does it—a very consistent survey of both victim satisfaction and confidence, which is measured at the moment through six different elements. We do have a confidence gap and when I arrived as commissioner, because I am passionate about these issues, I set out that one of the things I wanted the Met to achieve under my leadership was to reduce the gap between those who have least confidence and those who have most. There are some improvements in some elements, some small improvements, but I know there are still some big gaps.
Q390 Chair: The March 2019 figures that I have for London suggest a drop in confidence among black Londoners of 13% compared to last year, with only 63% of black Londoners thinking that the police treat people fairly. That suggests things are going backwards rather than improving.
Cressida Dick: We are talking, I think, about the gap. I would have to acknowledge that in the last year in all communities in the way that we currently measure it—and I think there is a slight weakness in one aspect of that but nevertheless in all communities—the overall percentages have dropped but the gap over the last couple of years has narrowed a little. However, that is just one way of measuring it and I have read the transcripts of the evidence you have taken. You are listening to people all the time in your roles as MPs and I am fully aware that surveys only tell you so much, but I need to hold my organisation to account by our surveys in one instance.
Q391 Chair: Can you clarify what it is that has narrowed? I do not want to be misreading the figures that I have but these figures suggest that the gap on the assessment of whether or not the police treat people fairly regardless of their background, on that measure it looks as though the gap has widened in the last 12 months.
Cressida Dick: Yes, I think that is true.
Q392 Chair: That does suggest that the force is going backwards. I understand that overall confidence issues may be affected by overall resources, overall patterns of crime, but these figures suggest on the issue of whether people are being treated fairly according to who they are, which is clearly a person-related issue, that gap seems to be widening.
Cressida Dick: On that particular metric, I would agree. On that particular one, it is. On some of the other elements it is not and when you add them all up the gap has slightly narrowed over the last couple of years, what we call the overall confidence model. But let me send you the full up-to-date data on that.
Q393 Chair: Okay. Why has that gap widened?
Cressida Dick: I think we have been hugely affected, as Baroness Lawrence said, by the outrage that there has been, quite properly—and she would say there should have been a lot more and I rather agree—about knife crime in our black communities, our African and Caribbean communities. I should point out this confidence gap you are talking about is very different in our Asian communities and it is very small in fact in many minority ethnic communities, but if we focus very strongly, as we should I think, on our African and Caribbean heritage communities, our black communities, I think that has been affected hugely by the increase in attention given to and actual, until recently, knife crime affecting our young people.
That has meant two things. First, I think people are quite rightly questioning what everybody is doing for them to stop that, including the police, and, secondly, it is possible, but I can’t prove this, that for some black Londoners our increased enforcement operations are affecting their view of us negatively. I have to say I am out on the streets all the time and I talk to people from our black communities, young and old, who are only asking for more policing and more enforcement, so I don’t think it is a consistent picture. Then we are doing all of us this against, as you have just pointed out, a very febrile social media lens, which means on occasion I think we don’t get our messages out as positively as we should and we struggle to keep up with that.
Q394 Chair: Do you measure confidence by age and ethnicity together?
Cressida Dick: Yes.
Q395 Chair: What is your assessment of the confidence gap for young black Londoners?
Cressida Dick: That is more extreme. Young people in general have lower confidence than older people and young black Londoners undoubtedly have less.
Q396 Chair: What are you doing about it?
Cressida Dick: Do not for one second think we are not working really hard at this. For example, I will take the last 12, 18 months. As we have sought to stop in particular young black men being stabbed and killed, we have upped our enforcement operations and you will be aware, sadly, that our black communities are hugely disproportionately represented in both stabbings and homicides on the street. Before I came I looked at the last 18 young men under 25 who have been murdered on our streets in London and 14 of them are of African or Caribbean heritage. This is not out of kilter, I am sorry to say, with elsewhere. You will be aware of the percentages in London. When I map at one year, three years, five years even 10 years serious violence, stabbings and homicides, which is where we have been putting all our resources, I can see a part of London, so I am drawing that for you, which maps almost entirely, sad to say, on the highest concentrations of people from African and Caribbean communities.
I am outraged by the level of violence. We have begun to reduce that. It may not feel like that to some people, I understand that, but knife injury under 25 is now down I think 20%, so that is probably nearly 400 fewer victims. I could go on. Lethal barrel discharges are down. We are out there and we are working as hard as we can and I think it is our job to protect our most vulnerable communities as best we can in that way. We can’t do all this by ourselves, and we have discussed this before, of course. At the same time, I have said to my teams for every extra percentage effort we put into enforcement, we need to be explaining ourselves and we need to be engaging, we need to be talking to the public in every which way we can.
We are doing those enforcement operations in as sensitive a way as they can be done. For example, if there has been or there is threatened a serious outbreak of violence and we are putting in resources from other parts of London, we always will talk to community leaders before we do that, we will have members of the community out on the street while we are doing it, we will have local officers, neighbourhood team officers out with the officers, and we are talking, talking, talking to people. We are trying to do it as sensitively as we can but this is just part of a much wider strategy of trying to increase confidence.
We talked last time about increasing the number of schools officers. We are at a record high with the number of schools officers and they are in the PRUs as well as the schools, as you know, hundreds and hundreds of them. We are still invested in neighbourhood policing. We are working with all our partners as hard as we can to try to get our policing messages through but also to get our partners to help in that cause, which is, on the one hand, to reduce the violence and on the other hand to improve the confidence in the police service.
Chair: We want to pursue some of those individual issues with you.
Q397 Rehman Chishti: Commissioner, on the issue of stop and search, you just said that knife crime has gone down by 20% and has led to a significant saving in lives. Linked to that comes the issue of the use of stop and search, because you have identified individuals who carry knives in the first place. My question to you is: is there unequivocal evidence that stop and search is an effective, intelligence-led policing tool?
Cressida Dick: I think if you look at the academic research, which goes back in this country for many years, you would have to say that there is some strong evidence. I appreciate that you have taken evidence from people who say there is none but there are some pieces of academic work that do show that used in the right way stop and search can make a difference. What I know as a professional police officer of 36 years, who has worked nearly all that time in London, is that having confident officers who know their powers out on the streets, engaging with people and doing stop-search where appropriate, properly intelligence-led in the right places against the right people, undoubtedly makes a difference to violent crime. That is one but only one of the things that we have been doing in the last few months.
Q398 Rehman Chishti: When you say that if used in the right way it can make a real difference, the question that arises is: is it being used in the right way now compared to how it was being used before?
Cressida Dick: We have one great advantage now, which is the body-worn video, which has not only reduced complaints hugely—some people would say by 40%—but has certainly given a greater sense of confidence both to the officers and, I think, to the vast majority of people who are stopped and searched. If you want to compare it with 10 years ago or 20 years ago, we have done huge amounts of training and we are working with some much more sophisticated guidance to our people now. We do have good intelligence and really focused leadership around it and we are very careful about our communication and involvement of the community in the work that is going on. I think it is being used very sensibly, very sensitively. I should say, though, that what we have seen in the end of year figures, which are different from the ones in the report you have, is probably a 30% increase in the use of stop and search in the last year.
Q399 Rehman Chishti: Linked to that point, when we see a report by StopWatch that says that young BME individuals on a matrix—and we will come to the matrix in a minute—were being subjected to relentless searching without a demonstrable, legitimate purpose and sometimes several times a day, how does that tally to what you just said as being used appropriately, reasonably and fairly when you have another report over here saying completely contrary to that?
Cressida Dick: I have not read the report you are talking about, I think, but I have read a lot of the evidence that has been submitted to the Committee and a lot of the oral evidence that has been given. One of the things I do think, and I am not sure whether this is true of this report, is that a number of people giving evidence have confused things that were happening five, 10, 15 years ago with what is happening today. There is anecdote and also some really wrong figures in some of the evidence you have already received, which I am very happy to write in about afterwards, that is out of context and old.
I am very pleased to live and work in a city where there are groups who see it as their job to hold the police to account, keep an eye and campaign on certain issues, and that is what is StopWatch does. We meet with them really regularly. We know each other very well, but I can’t possibly answer that question because I don’t know who they are talking about, when or where. I go out on the streets a lot, I talk to my teams, I know how the systems work, I know what they are doing, I think, and I don’t recognise that as an up-to-date measure.
Q400 Rehman Chishti: Just being fair to you, you have not seen the report, so for you to comment on that report is being unfair and for me to ask you to is unfair. I thought you had seen the report because you had an officer here yesterday who was giving evidence and he said that he had seen that report. If you can comment on it once you have seen it and send that to the Committee, that would be very helpful. I have two further points. When you say you are out meeting diverse communities and they say they want more policing and more enforcement—
Cressida Dick: And more stop and search sometimes, yes.
Rehman Chishti: Yes, absolutely, and with that comes the issue that enforcement would want to be seen to be fair. When you see individuals from certain sections of the community being targeted more, based on their ethnic origins, that would lead to having a further gap in confidence in policing with certain sections of the community. How do you address that?
Cressida Dick: I really don’t think that is what is going on. In the report that you have read out, they make the assumption that there is no legitimate purpose. How can I say, how can they say, but you do have to have grounds that are very clear if you are carrying out a section 1 search. Of course the law is different for section 60, but I have absolutely no sense whatsoever that my people are targeting people on the basis of ethnicity or race. I think when you look at the positive outcome figures, which are of course very similar for people of all ethnic origins, that shows that this is being done fairly.
Q401 Rehman Chishti: Commissioner, I have to say that the points I have put to you are not necessarily what I am saying. I am just putting forward questions from the evidence I have. The question that I would like you to clarify is that earlier you said about how it was being used before and how it is being used now. With regard to that we know that the former Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, gave guidance in relation to how stop and search should have been used in 2014 and now it is being said that that was not quite right because that took away the powers from the police to address the issues on tackling serious crime like knife crime. Do you think political decisions went too far in 2014 in removing the power from the police to use stop and search to address the issue of serious crime that we are doing now?
Cressida Dick: I think there were some very legitimate concerns about the volumes of stop and search and the way in which it was being conducted in maybe 2010 up to 2013. If you look, for example, at section 60, which you will have noted we are now using a lot more again, we are using it in exactly the way that one of your witnesses described it ought to be used, which is limited periods of time, absolutely when we fear serious violence is about to take place, with very good communication and involvement of people in the communities. It is not uncommon for me to get somebody saying, “Surely there is going to be a section 60 now or there is going to be a continuation of one” from the communities and I will say, “No, it is for an inspector now to make that decision but it is actually not justified”. We are using it in a very narrow and targeted way.
It is fair to say that that means that our volumes are less than 10% of what was being done maybe 10 years ago and I think that is right. I don’t expect us to go back to that level, frankly, and I would be very surprised if we did. I have never thought that there was a massive reduction in our powers. I think there was a sort of chilling effect, I do think that, on officers. Many of them began to think, and I have said this before, that to use the power, even where completely professionally, completely courteously, completely with good grounds, was likely to get them into either major conflict and/or a very difficult situation in which they would not be supported. I think quite a lot of them heard it as a “best not unless you really have to” and I regret that. Of course, it happened at the same time as a reduction in resources, so we had fewer people on the street anyway to do that sort of work of patrol where you might be going to do a stop and search. I do think that there is some link between the reduction in stop and search that eventuated after 2014 and the increase in violent crime that we have seen.
Q402 Rehman Chishti: Stop and search is being used to a great extent now to address the issue of knife crime. On the issue of stop and search and the issue of possession of drugs, there is a greater level between the searches that take place and the possession of drugs. How do you compare that in relation to stop and search and the greater use that is being put forward now in relation to the problems that we have with knife crime?
Cressida Dick: We are now very clearly targeting—and targeting is the right word actually—people for all sorts of enforcement operations who we know to be prolific knife carriers or men of violence. I am sorry to be gender specific but I will be. What we are seeking to do is stop people being injured and to take weapons off the streets. We are not tremendously interested in the possession of drugs in this work. However, we absolutely know that a huge proportion of the violence that London has been suffering, and of course many other cities as well, is related to drug markets and a lot of the people that are carrying a knife or have a knife stashed are involved in drug dealing. We are working in those areas and we do stop and search that either results in drugs or is expected to find drugs but I am looking at that entirely through the lens of the violence that is associated with drugs markets.
Q403 Janet Daby: Good afternoon. I have some more questions for you about stop and search. There will just be a tiny overlap. The first thing I want to say is that it is good to learn from the past about how stop and search has been done, what continues to be done that is very similar and to see the progress as to what has changed. We know that is very important otherwise we would not even be reviewing it now with Macpherson and 20 years on. Prior to that was the Scarman inquiry and all of that is about identifying the ways in which the police need to work in an improved way with black communities and to ensure there is no discrimination against people because of their ethnic background.
The first thing I will put to you is: would you agree that the stop and search carried out by officers is a high resource, that it takes a lot of police time in that sense?
Cressida Dick: Of itself, not necessarily. Sorry, I am not trying to be unhelpful, but not necessarily. It is perfectly plausible that between here and two buildings down, New Scotland Yard, I would come across somebody who I or somebody with me thought, “I am going to go and talk to that person and I have got grounds to do a stop and search”. That would all happen perhaps unexpectedly and quite clearly and be over very quickly depending on what happened.
Q404 Janet Daby: The reason I say that is because often if you are a bystander and you are watching a stop and search take place, there may be two officers stopping and searching somebody and then a van will come up with an extra four to six people to observe or watch the stop and search that is taking place. From a bystander perspective, the stop and search where two officers are doing it seems entirely appropriate and then all of a sudden it seems inappropriate.
Cressida Dick: Sure. I am sorry.
Janet Daby: No, I am just explaining. That in itself seems like a very high use of police officers.
Cressida Dick: I think we do have to continually explain, which is why—and we may come to it later on—I am absolutely passionate about more and more information and education to young people in particular about their rights and about stop and search and about the police and how we work, who we are and what we are trying to achieve. The reality is that not always but sometimes when somebody is being stopped and searched there will be a requirement to use a van. If there is a requirement to preserve their dignity for one reason or another, vans are sometimes brought up for that purpose. The second thing is that it will depend entirely on the circumstances. This is probably not what you are talking about exactly, but sometimes, for the officers, it can become quite a charged and even conflictual situation. I am not going to name them but there are places I have been on patrol with officers where they say to me, “Even though everybody here knows that all those people are drug dealers and on occasion carry knives, if I was to go up and try to stop and search one of them, not only the fellow drug dealers but an awful lot of other people would come piling in, so I will only do a stop and search when I have some backup”. They know from previous history that that would be a tricky thing to do. But I can assure you there are people doing stop and search with two officers for safety purposes all over the place all the time.
Q405 Janet Daby: Yes. I suppose in those situations there is lots of different perspectives as to why and what this is and the different ways in which things can be explained. It seems to happen quite frequently where vans come up for something that seems quite straightforward that is going quite well and then the situation is escalated in some way that could seem unnecessary. The reason I also say it is because of the cuts that the police force have experienced, so you obviously need to use police time and resource very well.
Cressida Dick: I agree we need to explain that.
Q406 Janet Daby: When stop and searches are taking place, often we hear from officers that it is because of drugs, and I know my colleague on this Committee has already mentioned that. Stops are taking place because of drugs when actually they are trying to get knives off the street. How familiar are you with officers still saying that they suspect someone has drugs or they can smell that someone is using drugs?
Cressida Dick: I go back to my previous answer. Officers have operational independence. They can use their powers when they see fit, when they think it is the appropriate thing to do. Of course, if they think somebody is in possession of drugs that is, as you know, an offence and they can and should and do on occasion stop people who they believe are in possession, usually, I have to say, where they are expecting it is going to be a large amount but not necessarily. Where we have put extra officers into areas entirely designed to bear down—and stop and search is just one way; there is a whole load of other things we are doing—on the problem of violence, as I have said, when they are dealing with somebody they know is a prolific knife carrier but they do not have those grounds at the time but there may be some other grounds, I don’t think that is a bad thing. I do want them to be in and among the drug dealers and I think the public do too.
Q407 Janet Daby: In a conversation three or four weeks ago with young people who are often stopped by police officers, they spoke about one occasion they were on their way to the park—and this is a constituent—and they were told that, “A robbery recently took place and you fit that description”. Their conversation with me was that they have heard it so many times that they know it is not true. My question was, “Why don’t you complain? Have you put a complaint in?” I know that people in the black community don’t want to complain because they are afraid they will then be targeted in some way by the police and it is fear of reprisal. Are you aware of this type of thing in your conversations?
Cressida Dick: Yes, I absolutely recognise that where confidence is low people are going to be less likely perhaps to use the complaint system for a number of different reasons. I think they would be quite wrong to think that, but I have heard this too where people say, “They will only come after me again”. But I would urge everybody round this table to help people to think that they should make complaints because, after all, stop and search is fully accountable, there will be a written record, it will go on an intelligence database. There is almost certainly, not in 100% of the cases, a body-worn video. If that were to be a lie, which is your suggestion, that could be easily shown.
Q408 Janet Daby: Yes, but people will say this because they have had experiences of this and again that is the past. Sometimes it is the past but sometimes that is still the present, so it is still things we need to be working on.
Cressida Dick: Absolutely.
Q409 Janet Daby: My next question is to do with the body-worn cameras. Evidence suggests that although officers have this really significant tool, that is helpful for both themselves and somebody they may be dealing with, sometimes it is turned off.
Cressida Dick: Sometimes it has not been switched on, is the way I would put that.
Q410 Janet Daby: Either way, it is not recording necessarily the information that needs to be recorded and that then becomes an issue about why is that, have they forgotten, what are the reasons around that, and of course it is not serving the purpose it needs to serve.
Cressida Dick: In a stop-search there is an expectation that the body-worn video will, if possible, be switched on, and of course we would be aiming in an ideal world for 100% compliance. We have been consistently at 89% compliance for the last few months, which I think is very good. There are a few reasons for saying that. First, we do not have a covert body-worn video but sometimes my covert officers are required to do stop and search. Secondly, somebody may just jump out of a van after a call where all hell is breaking loose, so to speak. That calms down and they end up doing a stop and search and they may just genuinely not have the time, the pair of hands or remember to do it, and I understand that too. Thirdly, sometimes people will be walking around without their body-worn video because they just will be. I don’t carry one. We are not going to get to 100% and I think 89% is pretty good.
Q411 Janet Daby: It sounds like you are contextualising it as to why or what and what may be the situation, which is fair. There is usually more than one officer on the occasion, so you would not expect all officers or both officers to have their body-worn camera off at the same time. Also, what are you doing about it where they do have it off when a stop and search has taken place?
Cressida Dick: We will look at that. As you know, we dip sample the actual videos and we involve the community a lot in that and we are always trying to learn from that, but they will likely give an explanation when they give their record and if they don’t—I would not say this will happen in every occasion—I would expect supervisors who spot that there is not a body-worn tape linked to the report to say, “Why not?” We are really encouraging them to do it and, of course, the more the better from my point of view, and I think the public’s point of view. The point I am trying to make is that they should do it if they possibly can but I am not going to say they have failed if they don’t do it 100% of the time.
Q412 Janet Daby: My final question is that many young black men feel that the stop and search process is very intrusive, humiliating and especially where they are not carrying drugs, they do not have knives, they do not feel as if they should have been stopped when they have been stopped. It could be a situation when they are on their way to school or work or to the park. It is a huge level of inconvenience to them as well as the intrusive feeling of being stopped and being perceived to be a criminal or somebody who has committed an offence, as well as the fact that you have two adults, or there may be more than that, speaking to you. There is the whole feeling of intimidation. I have often heard from young people that they do feel targeted by the police and they do feel victimised and when some people have seen the police coming they have crossed over the road and that can be perceived as behaving suspiciously when they just want to be left alone.
My issue with all of this that young people need to know where to go to get help and at some time, hopefully not, people will need support from the police. The police are there for public protection but if young people don’t feel they can go to the police for help if they are being bullied to get involved in gangs or if they are being bullied to sell or if they are being manipulated or controlled in some way to put money in their bank account or to carry a knife, where do they go for help if they don’t have that trust or confidence in the police that the police are there to help them? Instead, it is almost like feeling there is no place to go. You have this sense of desperation and loneliness where you are experiencing things from gang lords or whatever they are called now and from the police. Something does need to be done around the stop and search and how it is carried out and how the police relate to young people.
When we took evidence from the Director General of IOPC he spoke about some evidence coming from young people and what they want from the stop and search process. One of the key things he said at the end is for the police officer to recognise when they have stopped somebody and found nothing to actually apologise for that taking place. That has begun to happen in parts of the country with police services. Is this something that the Met Police is considering? If it isn’t, I think it is something that the Met Police should consider.
Cressida Dick: Very briefly, I think there are all sorts of reasons why a young person may feel—I can’t put myself in their shoes of course—in the position you describe where they are trapped between somebody who is controlling them and a service, probably a whole range of services that they don’t really trust. There are all sorts of reasons for that.
Janet Daby: I am just talking about the police service for now.
Cressida Dick: Sure. Some of that is historic. I am sure you have this as well. I sit in rooms with some young people who will say to me, “Why should I ever speak to a police officer? I was told from the age of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, we don’t, we won’t, we can’t, we shouldn’t, they are not safe, you shouldn’t”. The gang people put an awful lot of nonsense into their heads about this as well. I think we all have a responsibility, as I said before, to make sure that of course each interaction is as positive as it possibly can be. We do train the officers and this will go on again and again in the future, I am sure, about how to handle such an encounter particularly with a young person. We look at body-worn videos and say, “This one went well, this one didn’t go so well. What was the issue there?” How being courteous, how relating to, how explaining yourself properly, how, as you say, afterwards hopefully, and I see this very often, sending the young person off down the street with a smile, and we get that a lot and we encourage that from the officers. You are doing it for a reason, explain it, of course, that is part of the law, and afterwards if nothing is found make sure, if you can, that they go away in a positive frame of mind.
Q413 Janet Daby: What about this apology for intrusion in the first place? That would build confidence in the police.
Cressida Dick: I think they do.
Q414 Janet Daby: It is not enough to think, with all respect. You need to know this is happening and it is about improving those relationships between the young people and the police.
Cressida Dick: Yes, and I do see officers who say, “Sorry to have detained you”, of course I do. What I don’t think you are asking, and I definitely wouldn’t want them to say is, “Sorry, I should not have done that” or “sorry that is a mistake”, but “Sorry you have been detained”, absolutely.
Q415 Janet Daby: If that is appropriate, of course they should say it, of course they should if that is appropriate. Young people often also grow up wanting to be police officers and firemen and all of that. Thank you.
Cressida Dick: If I could take you back to the Notting Hill carnival last year, you will remember we were doing huge volumes of stop and search there because of the treat to the carnival from violence.
Q416 Janet Daby: I have heard other stories about the Notting Hill carnival and how stops were carried out and people put in—I have heard other things, but that could be another time for another conversation.
Cressida Dick: I can show you great videos of exactly what you are describing.
Janet Daby: I am sure you can as well. Thank you.
Q417 Chair: Some follow-up information about what guidance and advice is given to police officers about whether they should be apologising in those circumstances would be very helpful so that we have a bit more clarity about it.
Cressida Dick: The circumstance being where nothing is found?
Chair: Where nothing is found, yes, what guidance is given to police officers in those circumstances and what evidence is recorded afterwards as well.
Q418 Toby Perkins: I would like to ask you about your recruitment and the experiences of BME officers in the Metropolitan Police. Over the course of the last 20 years there has been a significant increase in the number of BME police officers but there has obviously been a very significant increase in the size of the BME population in that time as well. Now around 40% of London is from BME communities and I think about 14% of your officers are, so there is still a huge discrepancy between the proportion of the population that is from these communities and the proportion of your officers. What do you think is the main reason for that?
Cressida Dick: You are right, I think since we gave you those figures we have increased the officer proportion to just about 15% and overall the Metropolitan Police is about 19% black and minority ethnic. Both of those are quite a big lift in the last few years and I am absolutely determined that that should continue and indeed accelerate, for all the obvious reasons. I really believe this is important for our business. When I go on Friday to our passing-out parade I fully anticipate, because this is normally the case, that I will have probably 28% of the officers passing out being from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, which is a huge change from just a few years ago, as you know. We sort of stuttered along for quite a long time.
But we absolutely are ambitious to try to improve that. We have done some modelling and nothing stays the same but if everything was to broadly stay the same it would take us an inordinately long time to get to 40%, as you have described. I have set some quite challenging aspirations, I think, that we should move now faster if we possibly can.
Q419 Toby Perkins: Can you tell us the main things you are doing to increase the proportion?
Cressida Dick: Yes. We don’t lose officers very fast, as you know. Our turnover rate is slow and low, less now but most people stay for the full 30 years. Of course it depends how many we can bring in and how many are going out and any growth we may get from the Government. But at the moment we are out campaigning very hard. We are engaging in—again I will use the word—a targeted way in schools and colleges and in local areas. We are working really hard throughout the recruitment process if some people show some interest—
Q420 Toby Perkins: Sorry, could you be a bit more specific? I am hearing phrases like “working hard” and “engaging”. What does this actually look like?
Cressida Dick: We have a recruitment process that until recently was largely based on a portal. If you had heard about us and you were interested in us or somebody had pointed you in our direction you go into a portal and do an online application. We are now out much more actively with our neighbourhood teams and with other officers in schools, in colleges, on the streets, in areas of very high African and Caribbean in particular but ethnic and racial diversity more broadly, talking to people about thinking about becoming a police officer, because we are determined to try to increase the numbers. We want them to come in with their eyes open, so throughout the process we are giving extra special positive action support to people from black and minority ethnic communities who show interest in joining us. I can take you through all that if you like but there is a whole series of things we are doing to try to ensure that if somebody is interested and has the qualities that they get to the point of being employed by us.
Q421 Toby Perkins: On going in with their eyes open, we heard yesterday that across the country—and I believe it is the same in the Metropolitan Police but tell me if it is not—black and ethnic minority police officers are more likely to be disciplined, more likely to resign or be dismissed. Is that the case and what analysis have you done as to why that is?
Cressida Dick: I think the Committee has had sight of some of our figures and indeed the work that MOPAC has done on this subject. You will be aware that the outcomes of misconduct itself—you are right, we have slightly narrowed the gap but you are still 1.8 times more likely to be subject to a misconduct allegation if you are from a black and minority ethnic background. However, in terms of what happens in the process, it is pretty equal throughout after that. The outcome after that is very similar, which is a good and positive change because a few years ago the punishments, the treatment of the black and minority ethnic people appeared to be much heavier sanctions.
It has changed but we still have a gap at the point of the likelihood of being subject to misconduct. The MOPAC report talks about three possible reasons for that and I am happy to talk about that if you like. We are not unique, policing is not unique. This is unfortunately a phenomenon that is found in all kinds of services and sectors at the moment, but I am determined to continue reducing that and we have a whole series of measures in place to ensure that we do.
Q422 Toby Perkins: Can you tell us about any evidence you have from exit interviews when black and minority ethnic police officers have left the force of their own volition? What is your evidence as to what you are hearing about why they are more likely to choose to leave than white officers?
Cressida Dick: I have seen all sorts of figures bandied about. Our latest figures would tend to suggest that we are losing on resignation a slightly higher proportion of black and minority ethnic officers in the first two years but after that it is very equal. I expect we may talk about progression in a second but if we don’t, just to say that every promotion process is now very equal, it really is. But we are finding a slightly higher resignation rate in those first two years, so we are drilling right down into that as we speak, but we do do exit interviews, as you have said. I am not sure they have been as—the take-up rate has not been as high as I would like so we are changing at the moment the way that that is done. There is a telephone interview offered and some people ring and some people don’t and you should see your senior officer. Of course some people will say things to them but they might not.
We are going to improve the exit interview process, but the predominant things that come out are that people find that they want to make a change for career development reasons. They are saying, “I thought this was the job for me but actually I have now been offered this or I can see that and I would like to go somewhere else”.
Q423 Toby Perkins: That could happen to anyone, couldn’t it?
Cressida Dick: Exactly, it could.
Toby Perkins: But there is a discrepancy, isn’t there?
Cressida Dick: Sure, but I have to face the fact that young talented black and minority ethnic people may well be very attractive to other employers, for all the reasons that you talk about. I do not see it necessarily as totally negative but of course I would like to keep them. Secondly, they talk about, as other leavers do, quality of life in terms of some family issues, which is my eyes wide open thing. They had not quite understood some of the demands of the job.
Q424 Toby Perkins: Are they more likely to not have understood them than white officers?
Cressida Dick: I don’t know. I can’t tell you that. It is possible but I don’t have that evidence.
Q425 Toby Perkins: Would the force routinely do exit interviews of people that left?
Cressida Dick: Yes.
Q426 Toby Perkins: Do you keep a statistical analysis of what that tells you?
Cressida Dick: We do but, as I said, I don’t think it is perfect at the moment so I am trying to improve it. Thirdly, some talk about feelings around respect and fairness. It is a whole variety of different things. It is a category that we would end up with if somebody said, “I just didn’t feel that this was the environment I thought it was going to be”. There will be some cultural issues, or they had a disagreement with somebody or whatever. We tend to put that in a different silo pot, but that is the third and least dominant of the issues.
Q427 Chair: Is that a category in which somebody would raise it if they think they have been extremely unfairly treated or been discriminated against?
Cressida Dick: Well, I would hope if they felt that they would have raised it in a different way, and I think they probably would. But of course, as in any organisation, you could have people who are leaving feeling very cross about something who would then tell you at the exit interview.
Q428 Chair: Your description of it makes it sound like it is quite a few fluffy things and it might be a broad range of things. If there are some serious concerns, even if it is not the majority, is that the category that should be being taken most seriously?
Cressida Dick: Absolutely. We are concerned about the other two, of course we are, but absolutely and I do, and I think any leader of any organisation in London now might, report something slightly similar and certainly ought to be drilling down and analysing it and working hard at it in the way that I am.
Q429 Chair: Given all of the things you have just said that you are doing, if there is 14% of officers at the moment—
Cressida Dick: There is 15%.
Chair: —when do you expect to reach 20%?
Cressida Dick: I hope and have asked, set a stretch target and that means that we are investing very heavily in this area, that we will get to 19% in three years’ time and over 20% in five years’ time. There is a number of things that could affect that and if, as seems to be being talked about at the moment, there is a possibility that policing will be much further and better resourced in a way that we would all welcome, I expect—I certainly would—that will change some of these possibilities. It would change things quite considerably, but that is what I am saying to my teams, which is very stretching, we ought to be trying to do. I can’t guarantee we will get there.
Q430 Chair: Clare Davies in the briefing on the 20th anniversary of the Macpherson Report was reported as saying, “If we continue, even with the great progress we’ve made, it would take over 100 years to be representative of London”. That is a really, really long time.
Cressida Dick: Appalling, and she gave it as an example and to explain to the media why we are investing such a lot of money in improved recruitment.
Q431 Chair: Is it your assessment that it will take less than 100 years?
Cressida Dick: Absolutely. I have just told you my target—sorry, Chair. I have just outlined the target.
Q432 Chair: That gets you to 20%, so in terms of your 40%?
Cressida Dick: Okay, sorry. So 40% is parity but that takes very much longer and who knows where London will be. The further out you go the harder these things are to imagine.
Q433 Chair: Do you have a time for when you might get to 40%?
Cressida Dick: Getting to 40% at the rate that we have set, with nothing else changing beyond continued extra effort, will get us there in—I will have to double check that but I think 2029.
Q434 Chair: What about any targets for promotion and higher up? You said something about the promotion system being equal now. When you look at the numbers you have gone from 14% or 15% overall to 9% of sergeants, 8% of inspectors, 8% of chief superintendents and 4% of chief officers.
Cressida Dick: I am not happy with this, of course. What I meant was that if there was any concern that one group or another was doing better in the promotion process that should be dispelled, because it is not. Historically there has certainly been a time where we have had fewer people from black and minority ethnic communities passing various promotion processes. Now the ratios are pretty much the same for all ethnic groups at any one time. They might fluctuate a little bit. If there is a very small promotion process it might look a bit different, but the white and black and minority ethnic officers do about the same in the processes. What we have struggled with historically—and again I am putting a lot of money and time into a whole variety of positive action initiatives that appear now to be bearing fruit—is in encouraging people to step forward for promotion and then getting them through. I really don’t think the figures that we have at the moment are where we should be.
Q435 Chair: Do you still have a gap in the proportion of people applying for promotion?
Cressida Dick: No, I don’t think we do. It is not the proportion, it is just that—
Q436 Chair: You have proportionate numbers of people applying for promotion and proportionate numbers achieving promotion?
Cressida Dick: In some respects, more proportionate. Some of the processes we are finding through the positive action work is that people who maybe should have thought of this a little bit earlier, or if only we had been able to support them better might have done it earlier, are now coming through. Some of the processes are seeing proportionally more black and minority ethnic officers.
Q437 Chair: Given the information and the evidence that we have had, including from the different police officer groups and organisations with evidence to the contrary, it would be really helpful to see those figures, if you have them.
Cressida Dick: Yes, for sure.
Q438 Douglas Ross: Good afternoon, Commissioner. On training, how do you think the Met has progressed with how it trains its officers since the Macpherson Report and do you think it is now at a level where it is robust and adequate?
Cressida Dick: It has most certainly changed hugely. There was a very large set of training done immediately after the inquiry report and that has changed and developed again and again and again. Now we have a whole variety of, and I think quite comprehensive, training for our recruits. They will have a lot of training on diversity. They will have a reminder of what happened in terms of Stephen’s murder. They will have a theme throughout the course of valuing cultural diversity. They will be taught about unconscious bias. The threads of diversity, inclusion, cultural awareness feature throughout our professional development and training courses, and it is not just in the classroom. When the officers go out on to the boroughs we make sure that they work with and in neighbourhood teams and the neighbourhood teams themselves have a requirement to bring people in from the communities to train other officers. I do believe that we can develop this further in the future and we should and will.
One of the things that I have been focusing on in the last two years is supervisors and leaders because, to go back to the Chair’s questions, I want to create a truly inclusive environment in which everybody can thrive. Going back to Mr Perkins’s questions, we had some issues in the past with how people felt and feel they were being treated and I can still see in the staff survey some lingering differences between, for example, black women and how they feel they are being treated, and white men. We need to keep on working at this and part of a very extensive investment in leadership training is about managing and leading a diverse and inclusive team, workforce, organisation.
Q439 Douglas Ross: What percentage of the initial officer training is dedicated to diversity?
Cressida Dick: I certainly can’t answer that. I am not sure anybody easily could because as I say—
Q440 Douglas Ross: I understand what you said about it threads through, but I think you did also say that there is a module or an element of it specifically on diversity.
Cressida Dick: Yes, but that would really not do justice to the work that happens at the training school. Please come and have a look. There are members of the community in on the training. There are so many different ways in which the officers are exposed to thinking that 20 years ago was unthinkable.
Q441 Douglas Ross: The reason for my question is I am sure you will have heard the evidence that some people were concerned, whether it is the initial officer training or later on in their career, it is almost a tick-box exercise that they do diversity training periodically, they tick that box and then they move on. Does it really sink in? Does it have the effect or is it simply to allow you to come to the Committee—I do not mean it in that way—to say, “All my officers have done their diversity training, X, Y and Z”? How can you reassure us that the evidence we received is wrong and your interpretation of the training is correct?
Cressida Dick: I cannot really comment on what a colleague has said there except to say again I felt when I was reading the transcripts there was a certain amount of talking about the past and the present in the same sentences sometimes. We are constantly evolving. The Met has changed unimaginably, not just in the ways I described but if think about the workforce, 85% of the workforce—something like that—is new since the inquiry, 90% something is new since Stephen was killed. The people that we are bringing in, mainly young but not all young, come in with utterly different approaches and attitudes from my generation. Of course they do. In a sense, young people right across London take these issues of diversity and inclusion for granted. It is not a big issue on a frontline response team where we have the young officers, generally speaking.
It is an important part of their training and they are constantly exposed to it. If somebody is appearing not to get it in some way the trainers will be straight on to that and would be talking to them about it.
Q442 Douglas Ross: Thank you. You have already highlighted that there is lingering differences between what a black female officer and a white male officer may feel about the training. What have you done to change that? You have highlighted that as a problem and you have seen that as an issue. Give us an example of how you have addressed that.
Cressida Dick: It is not about the training, it is about the overall environment. When I look at the staff survey and people reporting how they feel in our staff survey, there are a certain areas in which black women will report less favourably than white men on what they are experiencing. We have analysed that. We have sat down in focus groups and we have tried to understand exactly what sits behind. Of course there is a variety of different things and I have had a whole session not very long ago with 100 of my top leaders on exactly this issue: why is this; what are we doing about it; how can we move things forward?
We are working with our staff support associations, some of whom I know you have heard from but we have 32, many of which are representing people from black and minority ethnic communities.
Q443 Douglas Ross: Can I check for clarification? I understand all that you are saying but is it fair to say that you are still looking at this and you have not been able to address the concerns that these officers have raised? I am just asking for an example of what has changed because of these concerns.
Cressida Dick: The positive action work, for example. If you went through the last three or four months only, you would see a huge step up in our positive action work in a variety of parts of the organisation, specifically in relation to black and minority ethnic and, indeed, women officers.
Q444 Douglas Ross: Are you confident that as a result of that there will not be a lingering difference between the two?
Cressida Dick: It is one of the things. I have talked already about the leadership training, which is about diversity and inclusion. We haven’t talked about the response to the EHRC report, which I think somebody referred to in evidence before, where we have completely changed the way we deal with grievances and questions of discrimination. There is a whole series of things going on, some of which started some time ago and some of which are very new.
Q445 Douglas Ross: In response to Toby Perkins you said that in terms of officers receiving complaints there is a 1.8 times greater chance that someone from a BME background will be subject to a complaint but the outcome after that is likely to be similar between BME officers and white officers. Yet you provided us evidence in May that, “Allegations against BME officers were more likely to be substantiated compared with allegations against their white counterparts”.
Cressida Dick: Sorry, it is not complaints, not public complaints, it is misconduct allegations, which is a slightly different category, but that does not explain the difference. I stand to be corrected but I think if you look at the 2018 report from MOPAC it will say—
Q446 Douglas Ross: Is it the 2016?
Cressida Dick: No, the 2018 update report. It says that that gap has narrowed to a negligible amount.
Q447 Douglas Ross: You provided us with data in May, I am not saying it is from May, and I was just reading a quote from the data that you provided that allegations against BME police officers were “more likely to be substantiated compared with allegations against their white counterparts”. Are you saying that is no longer the case?
Cressida Dick: I think that is no longer the case. You have in front of you a section from the 2016 report but I, of course, absolutely do not want to mislead the Committee so I need to go away and check this.
Q448 Chair: The figures I have from the 2018 report are that BME officers are still twice as likely to face misconduct allegations, 4.6% compared to 2.1%. The gap that has narrowed compared to 2017 is the likelihood of having misconduct allegations substantiated and that is now, according to the 2018 standards, at 17% versus 14%. However, if they are still twice as likely to face misconduct allegations there is still quite a bit gap.
Cressida Dick: Yes, I agree.
Q449 Douglas Ross: What are the Met doing to address that?
Cressida Dick: We have a commander in charge of an action plan in response to this. It follows on from some work that came out of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission investigation. They have brought in members of the community and specialist advisers to help them work their way through particular complaints to make sure at the very early stages that this is proportionate. We have our new unit that looks at any suggestion from an officer that there is any discrimination going on or this is unfair in any way. They will have a look at that straightaway. It is a new unit. We are doing, as I said, a huge amount of training of our leaders to try to help them to become even better at managing a diverse workforce.
That is three things, I could probably name about nine. I think this will continue to get better. We are on a good trajectory; this gap has come down and I think it will continue to come down. The reasons for it are clearly complex, very complex and relate to all kinds of different things.
Q450 Douglas Ross: Just looking at one specific case that we alerted you to that we would raise today is the Gurpal Virdi case. What is your understanding of how that officer was treated? Have you looked at the Met’s response to that?
Cressida Dick: I was involved at a couple of stages over the years in issues relating to Mr Virdi who I knew before he left quite well and I think I had a good working relationship with him. I am not sure what you are referring to there but I am not in a position to comment on anything latterly.
Q451 Douglas Ross: It has been mentioned on the floor of the House of Commons very recently and the Committee informed you yesterday that there has been a submission from a Member of Parliament to our inquiry and we would be raising this. When the Committee alerted you to the fact that it would be raised today, what did you do? What did you go away and do and are you satisfied with the way the Met handled his case or do you think there should be a review of the actions taken?
Cressida Dick: If we are talking about a prosecution of Mr Virdi I would say of course that the decision to prosecute was made by the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis of a file, which will no doubt have laid out the evidence and the strengths and weaknesses. I really cannot comment any further. It would be inappropriate for me to do so.
Q452 Douglas Ross: Would the Met be open to reviewing the circumstances surrounding this case? The fact that this officer was involved in a personal inquiry and submitted evidence towards it, the fact he has now written a book about his experience, it is very much in the public domain, where there is a public interest, it has been raised on the floor of the House of Commons, we gave you the courtesy of saying we would raise it today, would it not be appropriate to say you will go away and the Met will look into all the circumstances surrounding this case?
Cressida Dick: I am not going to say that. I have huge respect to the honourable gentleman that you referred to, who I know, and he corresponded with me some few months ago on this matter. I know there was a meeting with my deputy assistant commissioner and I know that it has been reviewed. I also know that there has been a suggestion of a legal action and I think you will understand that it is inappropriate for me, frankly rather on the hoof, to talk about it.
Q453 Douglas Ross: Sorry, Commissioner, I do not want to be misrepresented here. I am looking for clarification that our clerks provided your office with knowledge, so it is not on the hoof. We could have done this with your deputy commissioner yesterday with no notice at all, but you were given advice that this would be raised. I don’t want people to be watching this to think, “Wow, why is he suggesting something that she had no—”
Cressida Dick: I do not deny for one second—
Q454 Chair: Do you accept that you were advised?
Cressida Dick: I do not deny for one second that, of course, the clerk contacted my office and said that something might be raised in relation to Mr Virdi. I didn’t know what, I didn’t know how, I didn’t know what I was going to be required to answer, I had many other things going on yesterday, not least preparing to talk about 20 years since Lawrence and all its manifestations.
Douglas Ross: Which this is leading to.
Cressida Dick: I am not therefore prepared, on the basis of that, to say, “We will do a full review”. I am absolutely prepared to say I will go away and have another look, of course.
Q455 Douglas Ross: You will consider it?
Cressida Dick: Of course, yes.
Q456 Chair: Can I clarify something you just said about the likelihood of facing misconduct allegations? The figures I have suggest that gap has not narrowed in the last couple of years. A couple of years ago it was BME officers twice as likely to be subject to misconduct.
Cressida Dick: It is now 1.8, I think. The latest figure were 1.8, I believe.
Q457 Chair: The 2018 figures I have here is 4.6% compared to 2.1%, which looks like more than twice to me.
Cressida Dick: I am fairly sure, so I am going to have to write to you.
Q458 Chair: If we could clarify, because I think if there is no change happening and there is no progress and no narrowing of the gap that would obviously be a considerable concern.
Cressida Dick: Yes, I think you will be encouraged that there has been some narrowing, not enough but some.
Q459 Chair: On police staff, can I clarify, is it correct that currently 6.8% of your staff are BME, which is slightly less than the 7% that it was in 2005?
Cressida Dick: No, police staff for us refers to people, for example, in analytical roles, in intelligence, people who are answering the phones and despatching officers, people who are non-sworn or have very limited powers and work in detention offices, for example. We have a largish staff population, not as large as it was because of the resource constraints and outsourcing but nevertheless our black and minority ethnic representation in our staff as a whole is 25%.
Q460 Chair: It would be helpful then if you can clarify with the clerk the discrepancies and some of the figures.
Cressida Dick: I wonder if we are talking about more senior staff or some subset of staff, but certainly the staff percentage is higher than the officer percentage by 10 percentage points, PCSOs are higher again at 40% and the special constabulary are 31%.
Chair: Fine, we will pursue that. That is one of the sources of evidence that we have.
Q461 Kate Green: You have been talking a little about the positive action steps that you have been taking. Have you used the tie-break procedure in making up the balances?
Cressida Dick: That is a very good question and I wish I did know the answer. I think we have, as in we must have in certain circumstances. Where you genuinely have two people who are equally qualified you can and we will have. I just cannot bring a particular example into my mind.
Q462 Kate Green: How have you advised recruiters in the Met about using the tie-break procedure?
Cressida Dick: Again, I am afraid I will have to write back to you. What I would say is I have two extraordinarily experienced and very capable HR leaders who are thoroughly exploring positive action in all its senses and what we can do within the current law. I have urged them to be quite audacious within the law.
Q463 Kate Green: Given that we are quite interested in positive action, if you could brief us on that it would incredibly useful. Can you say if you have reviewed and, if so, made any changes to selection criteria or recruitment processes?
Cressida Dick: Yes, we have. We have made quite a lot and we have them continuously under review. There is a number of different things we have done. We led the way in inventing a new assessment centre, which the College of Policing allowed us to trial but it was very much us that did it, which we felt would be a better predictor of who would be a good police officer and would potentially give people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds a fairer playing field.
We have recently, as part of our positive action, been running not only—and this sounds terrible—a handholding process up to the point of that assessment, constant contact with a case worker or somebody else if you want advice but also we bring people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in for briefings and to help them, if they wish, to understand more about the assessment process. We have completely changed who does the assessing. We have assessors from the community primarily doing our assessing but we still have a gap in success between the white candidate and the black and minority ethnic candidates. Again, I know we are not unusual in this but it does concern us and we are now working with a behavioural insights team and two or three other units to try to amend the selection process again to ensure that it creates a truly fair playing field for all. I am not saying it is unfair but you will understand the language.
Q464 Kate Green: You are assessing the effectiveness of the positive action changes you have made—
Cressida Dick: Absolutely, all the time.
Kate Green: —and evaluating the difference they are making. I guess in terms of the answer you gave us earlier about your ambitions for reaching 20% and then 40% of the workforce by reflecting London’s ethnic makeup that you would be looking to these positive action steps as a tool to achieve those?
Cressida Dick: Definitely.
Q465 Kate Green: You will be assessing whether they do in fact contribute?
Cressida Dick: Yes, definitely.
Q466 Kate Green: If they don’t—I think you said 20% by 2019, 2020?
Cressida Dick: It is 19% in three years’ time.
Q467 Kate Green: I beg your pardon, 19% in three years’ time. If you don’t reach that target, would you consider positive discrimination?
Cressida Dick: I, of course, would need a law change so to do.
Kate Green: Yes, that is possible.
Cressida Dick: I am very interested with the evidence the Committee have taken on this already. My predecessor was quite strong on the Met of all places, London of all places, we should be up for this. I have not campaigned in any sense for positive discrimination, frankly. From a rather pragmatic point of view, which is that I have lots of things to campaign about, I haven’t, until now, sensed any political appetite whatsoever for it. We do have a big gap and there are some respectable arguments, I absolutely see, for positive discrimination. Indeed, my commander for inclusion, diversity and engagement—and, by the way, I have invested a lot more in senior power on all these issues and now have an assistant commissioner who spends a lot of her time on it, a commander who spends all his time on it and I chair the board. He comes from Northern Ireland and brings that experience and understands well what happened there. I know it was not all easy and, of course, they had other contexts and they were able to lose people as well as bring people in but I can see some positives in it.
I personally am not an expert but I remain concerned about the perception, unfair though it might be, of unfairness and organisational injustice that can come from positive discrimination. I think there are many examples of that in history. The police service does need to be a place where people can walk into a job with confidence knowing that other people have confidence in them and they do not have a confidence gap themselves and also there is not a kind of pushback, “I should have had that job”. I can see it needs some very careful management. I have not said we should do this but if this Committee makes that recommendation and/or if subsequently the Government are interested in it then of course we would want to work together to see what would be the best and least worst way of doing this.
Q468 Kate Green: You would be prepared to keep it under consideration?
Cressida Dick: Yes, absolutely.
Q469 Kate Green: You have mentioned the PSNI experience and particularly picking up your point about whether it might delegitimise the appointment of certain individuals. Do you know how the PSNI dealt with that and what their experience was?
Cressida Dick: The National Police Chiefs’ Council had a debate about this very recently, as you may know, and I was part of that debate. Unfortunately it was also at the time the extinction rebellion protests were going on and I was out of the room when the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland addressed this very issue.
Many people in the PSNI would say this has been extremely successful, other people have more concerns about it, and I am sure that they thought very hard all along the way about how to help people feel confident and not be made to feel anything other than absolutely there by right.
That particular system of one plus one, which is what they did, is quite a powerful one. The disbenefit for us is we are already the largest single employer in London. To recruit for people leaving under normal circumstances we have to find about 2,200 people a year. We are growing at the moment. It is really hard work to get people to come in. In the London employment market of 0%, very few people are searching desperately for jobs so we have to work very hard.
If we grow, one of the disbenefits of positive discrimination I fear is that it will slow down that growth quite considerably. If we were to adopt any system, I think the one that the PSNI had was an interesting one.
Q470 Kate Green: You make a really important point here about how you manage, maintaining rather than going backwards in current performance, the growth in numbers. Do you have a plan for that?
Cressida Dick: We had a plan for the growth that we knew about and we have been working closely on a potential spending review bid. I have said to my people to aim high, if you don’t ask you don’t get and all those kinds of things. We do not have a plan but we certainly feel that we have a very sensible, coherent set of suggestions emerging of if there was more resourcing available, particularly police officers, we anticipated how we would use them, what that would entail, how we would manage that growth. Again, one of the unfortunate things about policing, as you know, is it has been very stop start in budget terms. We do have a lot of experience in there of moments of recently cutting right back, which brings certain problems, and perhaps, who knows, now growth in a larger scale.
I was around in the 2000s when we grew very substantially quite quickly and we know some of the hazards and difficulties of that but we do not have yet, because it would be wrong and it is early, a detailed plan on how we will do it.
Q471 Tim Loughton: Commissioner, we have been taking quite a lot of evidence on the gangs violence matrix, including yesterday from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball, and of course on stop and search as we have already heard today. There is a perception that there are racial disparities in the way they are applied. Without going into the whole way it works, because we had quite a detailed discussion about that yesterday, do you think that is potentially standing in the way of the Met bringing in more technologies, facial recognition and so on, and some of the uses of AI that may be applied to the algorithms because it is deemed not to be level playing field at the moment or not? Are you feeling that constraint?
Cressida Dick: I have worked in London for a long time, as I have said, and I am more conscious than anybody that we must take our public with us when we make major change, when we do things that could be interpreted as impacting less well on some than others. I know you took very detailed evidence yesterday about the gangs matrix. The gangs matrix is there to save lives, to keep people safe and to make sure that where possible people are taken away from criminality. The evidence shows that it is something that protects people from further future worse offending, it makes people less likely to offend and it makes people better protected as victims, but it has been interpreted by many in the communities as exactly the opposite of that. That is a problem for us, of course it is. It is a problem for all of us, I would say, because the police should be able to use intelligence tools effectively and must be able to prioritise who is causing the most harm and who is most at risk. That is what we do.
I do think that possibly the gangs matrix, but anyway lots of historic issues, make it slightly harder in this city than it might in others. As I said, I am proud to work in a place where the police work with the consent and involvement of the public. My view is that many new technologies are available and many more will be becoming highly available very quickly. That is the digital age. It is imperative that the police make proper use of those opportunities to keep the public safe but to do so in a way that is acceptable to the public, and ethical and lawful.
Q472 Tim Loughton: How are you going to solve it?
Cressida Dick: I do not think it is just for me, if I may say. There is a massive onus on all sorts of people to be as outraged that the police are not using certain technologies as other people are that they might be countenancing it. We are not in a particularly strong position in this country at the moment in making the best use of some of the technologies and I think we should be in a better place. We therefore need—and luckily there are some things coming—to be assured that we have the right frameworks, that there are the right checks and balances in the system and that people are talking a lot about this as a subject. I felt slightly a lone voice earlier in the year. This is a matter for the public, for Parliament, for all of us and we believe we can be trusted within whatever framework we are given to make the best use of such technologies.
Q473 Tim Loughton: Commissioner, the problem is the perception of police practice and, therefore, whatever technology you deploy to pursue that police practice. The great irony is that on something like the matrix, which is there to try to cut down on gang violence—and we all know that the biggest perpetrators of gang violence are BME teenage boys but equally the biggest victims of gang violence are that same constituency. There should be a project where you should be able to sell it as this is to protect the very BME group who are the biggest victims of it and be able to take the public with you, yet it has become one of biggest sources of negative comment and being used as an example of institutional racism still being available in the police, unfair though that may be.
You have not being able to sell that use of technology as a way of actually helping the BME community. You started off earlier, quite rightly, saying that things have transformed greatly because of the use of body-worn cameras, which has been quite an easy sell and I think the vast majority of members of the public would say, “Why didn’t we do it before” in many cases.
You made a speech to the Police Foundation last month where you talked, quite rightly, about the woefully inadequate detection rates of the police and that you absolutely needed to invest in and to use more technology, to which you have just said there are a lot available. I think there is a bit of a disconnect there in that you can only use those technologies if you can take the public with you. Clearly the key constituency we are involved with here, the BME community, you have not taken them with you by using technology in that particular case.
Cressida Dick: If I may, I do not think the gangs matrix is really a particularly high tech thing. It is not about a new technology at all, it is a process, if you like. I think also that the vast majority of the public would be very supportive of the gangs matrix if they knew more about it and they understood more about it. The same thing will apply in some senses to facial recognition. Our surveys tend to suggest a huge proportion of the public think that some sort of technology like that ought to be used against serious violent people and against terrorists. Of course you are very well aware that in the case of facial recognition there is a judicial review going on and we will see what that says. There is also other work going on, for example in RUSI, to try to work with others and we have been involved to come up with sensible frameworks for the use of new technologies. You are absolutely right, I say not just us but everybody’s job who has an interest in public safety is to try to help people in all communities understand where, how, when, what the checks and balances are, why you should feel that up to this point it is okay for the police to use it.
If we go back and think of the first time CCTV came in, the first time other technologies have come in, we have had to take the public with us. On occasions where the big “we”—because it is not about the police, it is about the Home Office, it is about all sorts of institutions as well—have failed to do that communication really well the first time around we have ended up sometimes having to retrofit, and I think that would be really bad.
Q474 Tim Loughton: Okay, but it in part depends on how you frame the questions. You have just said the vast majority of the public are in favour of using technology, be it facial recognition for serious violent people. I do not think many people are going to say, “No, I am not in favour of using technology for serious violent people”. It is not serious violent people that we are particularly concerned about. It is ordinary kids getting stopped in the street who are suspected of being part of gangs or whatever who do not buy it. Have you done polling and consultation among the very kids you are quite rightly endeavouring to protect as to what it would take for them to have greater confidence in you using extended technology, be it facial recognition or whatever?
Cressida Dick: No, we have not.
Q475 Tim Loughton: Isn’t that where the problem lies?
Cressida Dick: We have not, but I fully anticipate that in the months ahead, where we are not at least until after the judicial review when a decision will be made on going to use this particular technology on the streets, one of the things we will be absolutely looking at is how we consult, communicate and explain. The point I am trying to make is the limit of what it should and should not be used for I do not think should be set by the police, by a securocrat like me and the checks and balances should not be set by me. The way in which we are held to account by people should not be set by me and I want lots of people to get involved in this conversation. Equally, I want people in our communities, in our schools, in our gang teams, all over London, of course to be talking to young people and we will, I am sure, be doing such surveys.
Q476 Tim Loughton: I do not disagree with that, but I think the point is of course it should be down to the lawmakers to create the parameters and design the law for where it could be used. The issue, I think, though is not where we prescribe that it should be used but it is the trust in the police that it will be used just for those purposes and that it will not be stretched for purposes for which it was not intended, going back to the whole RIPA arguments about how one steps into the private domain as well. I think that is where greater consultation with the very people you are trying to protect, but with the very people who are caught up in the matrix and stop and search will make your job easier.
Cressida Dick: I think we can violently agree on that, absolutely.
Q477 Stephen Doughty: Commissioner, in April 2003 when you were head of the Diversity Directorate it was reported that the Met was unlikely to ever be able to eliminate institutional racism. More recently, this year The Guardian reported that you felt that the Met had transformed and was no longer institutionally racist and that the headline finding from the Macpherson Report was redundant. You said that you did not see it as a helpful or accurate description and you do not believe that the Met was. Can you explain the change in opinion between 2003 and 2019?
Cressida Dick: What I was trying to say in that article—inevitably not reported in exactly the way I said it—was that if you took a very purist view of the definition it was very hard to see how any organisation, I was not just talking about policing, could prove that it was not in 2003. That is what I feel about the definition; it has been so useful in many respects, so let me say that first of all. I think it has some really important elements within it, which have become almost watchwords for me, but it is now in particular for me, but I have always said—and again in the later report they did not report this—it is for others to judge, not us. My view is that it is a very unhelpful label now and the label itself, when given, does more harm than good. When you look at Sir William’s definition I find the elements useful but I do not think it is useful to say that the organisation is. It is binary; either you are or you are not, and it is very hard to prove you are not.
I am always on the lookout for unwitting, prejudiced, stereotypical behaviour, absolutely. I am looking at my systems and processes. You have heard me say that. We are doing that all the time and I am leading that, but I think that the label now does, as I say, more harm than good. It is something that is immediately interpreted by anybody who hears it as not institutional but racist full stop, full of racists, which we are not, racist, which we are not. It is interpreted as, as Sara said, do I think we are organisationally, systemically? I do not. I really do not.
When I look at the today Met compared with the Met I knew, it is utterly transformed. For me it is not a useful term at all now and I think it is a label that puts people off from engaging with the police, which we need, which reduces trust in the police, which is a bad thing, stops people joining the police, that is a bad thing, and generally affects transactions and the engagement on the street for my officers in a way that is unhelpful and ends up making people less safe, not more.
I am not in denial. I need absolutely no encouragement to keep on working on these issues that were raised initially 20 years ago and all the things that you have been talking about are things that I talk about with my teams most days, but I do not think this label is helpful.
Q478 Stephen Doughty: Do you understand the concern that has been expressed, for example by other witnesses who gave evidence, including Matthew Ryder QC and Imran Khan? Imran Khan said that your reported statements, and I think he had had the same view of what you just said, “I give a view to rank and file officers that we are no longer racist. We can do whatever we want. The leader of the organisation has said that. We have been given a clean bill of health”. Do you accept that while you yourself are clearly very committed to tackling many of the issues we have talked about today and discrepancies and gaps and so on, that others have a sense that everything has moved on and everything is fine?
Cressida Dick: No, I do not. I read Mr Khan’s comments, who I know very well, of course, and I am sorry he is disappointed. I appreciate that many people would rather that I had not said what I said, which is again slightly different from what was reported. Nobody in my organisation could be in any doubt whatsoever that we have, I have, zero tolerance of racism and that I am never saying the job is done. I could show you countless examples of where we are continually bringing up the issues of race and how we are engaging better with our public, better with people, last week the Somali community, whoever it might be, how we are setting out to ensure that we are really, truly inclusive, diverse and entirely responsive to London’s diverse communities. Nobody could, I believe, have read that comment in my—and I know one or two have come here and said that it was very disappointing and thought, “Well, she is saying job is done, it is all fine”. Nobody could think that.
Q479 Stephen Doughty: I accept you could take a zero tolerance approach to individuals guilty of racism and racist practice and so on, but obviously the Macpherson definition is very clear. It was about processes, attitudes and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotypes that disadvantages minority ethnic people. It is not the same as having that danger of looking at it just as individuals. It is the structures.
Cressida Dick: I agree, but people hear me talking about inclusion, they hear me talking about promotion and about impact on communities. They hear me talking about the efforts we are making on positive action. They hear me talk about race issues a lot and not just me. I have on my top team people who are—Neil Basu is passionate about these issues. He wrote a blog very recently about this. More to do. Further to go.
Q480 Stephen Doughty: I am not disputing that, but if you take a complete objective look at the facts and some of the discrepancies we have identified today in a whole series of different areas, the concerns that are being raised, those could be argued to be amounting to processes, attitudes, behaviour, systems, structures that are still leading to institutionally racist outcomes or situations.
Cressida Dick: As I have said before, I am passionately committed to improving the Met and improving our work with our communities. I am working on our systems, our processes, our culture, working to improve all our understanding of the various challenges and opportunities of working in this wonderful city all the time. I do not accept that label as a useful label now. I do not think people in my team think anything other than, “She is passionately driving on these issues and she is investing more” and if they stop and think about it in this way, “She is investing more than probably anyone has in it”.
Q481 Stephen Doughty: Would you argue that the headline finding from the Macpherson Report is now redundant?
Cressida Dick: I will say again I do not find the label helpful.
Q482 Chair: Is it your view that the Met does not have processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and so on? Is it your view that the Met no longer has any of those processes, attitudes and behaviours? That is the Macpherson definition.
Cressida Dick: If you take the top line, “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin”, I do not think we are doing that.
Chair: “It can be seen or detected—”
Cressida Dick: Absolutely.
Q483 Chair: The processes, attitudes and behaviour become the evidence of the collective failure. In order for us to assess whether there is collective failure of an organisation we need to start from whether or not there are processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination. The question is: do you think that the Met no longer has any of those processes, attitudes and behaviour?
Cressida Dick: No, I do not think we have none, but I think what we come back to is that I am saying it is not an organisation-wide issue. It is not systemic and I do not accept a collective failure. Of course as with Parliament, as with the Labour Party, I don’t know, wherever else, there are people who, on occasion, behave in a discriminatory manner and we need to root them out and get them out and deal with them. Of course, on occasion, we have processes that are at the moment, as an example—we have discussed some of them—resulting in a disparity that concerns me. I do not regard that as, “Oh, therefore it is” and I think the label is very unhelpful.
Q484 Chair: It is not clear to me whether you are disagreeing with the content or whether you are simply making an assessment of the impact of the phrase. Do you want to focus on the content issue for a second? You can rightly raise Parliament and political parties, and there are some important questions and challenges—
Cressida Dick: Every other organisation, yes.
Chair: —to all of our organisations, not about individuals but about whether our systems and our processes, frankly, include discrimination and prejudice, however unwitting it might be. I still come back to given that you have a 13% drop in black Londoners’ confidence in the police treating people equally, given that you still have a gap between the number of BME officers and staff who are being taken to misconduct compared to white staff being taken to misconduct, given that on the basis of the evidence you gave earlier it is still going to take decades for the force to be fully representative of the capital, how can you be confident in saying that there are not processes, attitudes and behaviour that however unwitting may still be there across the force and where there is still some form of failure to address them at a collective level, no matter how brilliant individuals might be at challenging it, at strongly overturning things and at making changes? I am surprised about the level of confidence you have about the processes.
Cressida Dick: I am not sure what else I can say, really, Chair. These phrases you have read out are watchwords for me. They have been for the last 20 years. I care about them deeply and I look at them all the time. I do not think the label is a useful label in any sense at all for the Metropolitan Police of 2019 or indeed a police service at the moment. I think to say, “You are. Given that, you either are or you aren’t and it is impossible to prove you are not” is not helpful. I think it does more harm than good and that is really all I can say.
Q485 Chair: Harm to whom?
Cressida Dick: To the public, because as I have said it alienates people from their police service. They hear it not as institutional, they hear it as racist, “Okay, so that is the way they are”, some people obviously. It stops people wanting to give us intelligence, give us evidence, come and join us, work with us. It is such a toxic thing to say that it affects the public and public safety, I believe, in a negative way and it suggests, also, that the Met of today is just like the one of 20 years ago, which is also patently untrue and unfair in so many respects.
Q486 Chair: Do you think you have a responsibility to have an open mind about this, as maybe all institutions should have? Have you also discussed whether or not by using this approach it looks as if you do not have an open mind to these things? Have you asked the Metropolitan Black Police Association; have you discussed with the black communities; have you discussed this with Doreen and Neville Lawrence; have you discussed this with Duwayne Brooks and all of those who obviously were affected initially by this?
Cressida Dick: Some of the above I absolutely have discussed it with and I will continue to do so. I appreciate some people find this a disappointing comment from a commissioner who has probably partly been appointed because of her history of fighting racism and living in London, working in London and being passionate about these issues. I absolutely see that some people have been disappointed by it and I will continue to talk to them and that is why I say always, and I will say it again for the third time, it is for others to judge.
Q487 Stephen Doughty: I have one last thing I want to ask on this before asking another question. We are an all-white Committee currently present here, and I do not doubt your personal sincerity, Commissioner. As a white woman heading the police force, do you think that you are ultimately able to be clear about whether or not the force is institutionally racist or not, or is it to those other organisations we have to listen?
Cressida Dick: I would like the Committee of course to listen to all voices, to take a balanced approach, to look across the history and all of the different things that have changed. I also want you, as you are, to focus on some of the things that remain deeply problematic for the police across the country in a variety of ways. It is for others to judge.
Q488 Stephen Doughty: Thank you very much. Can I ask a completely separate question? You are obviously aware of the resignation of Kim Darroch as the UK Ambassador to the US and Sir Simon McDonald has confirmed in a committee hearing in another part of this building today that there is a police inquiry into the leaking of the diplomatic cables. Can you confirm if that is the case and who has referred that to you? Is it the Foreign Office or is it No. 10?
Cressida Dick: I was not at the Select Committee. My understanding is that Sir Simon said the police are involved. First, to say as somebody who has been a public servant for a long time and indeed spent two years in the civil service, I think it is very sad to see somebody like Sir Kim resigning in this manner. I also think that as a citizen—not that you are particularly interested in my views as a citizen—it is a deeply worrying situation where communications like this can end up in the public domain. It is true to say that we have a constant communication with the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office about a whole series of different issues and they have alerted us to the fact that they have an inquiry. If and when they come to us, that would be our involvement at this stage, an involvement.
Q489 Stephen Doughty: They have not come to you formally yet to ask for an investigation?
Cressida Dick: Certainly when I walked into the room at 2.30 pm they had not come to us with any form of referral. Were they to come to us with a referral—and probably many of you will be familiar with this—we will assess the material they have and why they think this is a matter for the police and we will go through what is called a gateway process to decide whether it is. However much I as a citizen and a public servant might regret a leak, which I really do, as a police leader we are interested in whether a crime may or may not have been committed. That is the point at which we will get involved, in a referral and a scoping process. We are not at that stage yet, or we were not when I walked through the door at 2.30 pm.
Q490 Stephen Doughty: Having been involved in investigating leak inquiries of this nature before in your role in the Specialist Crime Directorate, talking in general terms, if there were to be a police inquiry into these matters—in my view it is potentially a clear breach of the Official Secrets Act and other legislation—would such an inquiry look at all of the potential routes there, the role of Ministers, former Ministers, special advisers, officials themselves and so on to establish who may or may not have committed any offences? Would it be wide-ranging in that sense?
Cressida Dick: We are in the very hypothetical and I do not think I can comment on this case. I have no idea at this stage whether we are going to get any form of referral and what that will say. Suffice to say, we think about whether a crime may have been committed and we also think about whether it is at all likely to be possible to identify who committed it and prove it and what kind of level of resource would be required to do the inquiry. These are all things we will take into account in any referral process. The first thing is there does have to be a crime. Once the police are investigating, the police go where the evidence will take them, but we are absolutely not there.
Q491 Stephen Doughty: Consider this as, me certainly, reporting this to you as a potential crime.
Cressida Dick: Well, I am not saying that.
Q492 Stephen Doughty: No, I appreciate that but I am saying it. You talked about your personal experience and obviously you are one of our most senior public servants handling a bunch of very important information, whether it is national security or other matters. What does this episode worry you most about in terms of the briefings that you might provide to Ministers and others about their confidentiality or otherwise?
Cressida Dick: I really have nothing to say on that. Of itself it will not affect anything I do in how I work with colleagues and indeed with Ministers.
Q493 Stephen Doughty: Do you think it might affect others?
Cressida Dick: I cannot tell. I cannot comment.
Q494 Stuart C. McDonald: Thank you very much for your time. A couple of follow-up questions, if I may. You spoke at the outset about what you might call a trust challenge, particularly with young black and minority ethnic people. We took evidence privately from a group of young folk a couple of months back and I have to say I thought some of the stuff that we heard was pretty staggering. In essence we were hearing that there were parts of London where lots of young folk would not even phone the police if they felt in danger and their impression of the police and their lack of trust in them was not just because of the general reputation of the police. It was more from their own experience of and interaction with the police. Do you accept there are places where there has been a significant breakdown in the relationship between young people and the police, in particular in black and minority ethnic young people, and what work has been done to try to rebuild that?
Cressida Dick: We are here 20 years on. If we were to compare the relationship now with what it was then it is infinitely, generally, very, very much better. It just is. I think the relationship between the police and young people from black and minority ethnic communities, and indeed the broader black and minority communities, is hugely improved. I do not accept the phrase “breakdown” as the inference there is that it has gone wrong recently. I think this is a continual work in progress for us; things are better than they were. I go to schools and colleges a lot and I meet with young people and talk with young people a lot and there are huge swathes of young black Londoners who are very at ease with their police service and probably have never been involved in any crime at all and are carrying on with a positive life where they have a reasonably positive attitude about the police, but there are some other areas and micro-communities where for a number of reasons trust may be low.
You may be aware that London has changed a lot in the last 20 years and one of the things is that we have many more people of black African origin and sadly, when you look at a lot of the serious stabbings and murders, a high proportion come from the black African communities. The issues may be different for some of them than they would be for long-established black British or black Caribbean-origin people. I do not want to generalise too much. Suffice to say we have different challenges with different areas and different communities and sub-communities in terms of trust, but there are many people who do not have this. However, I know it was a private session but I have read the material, perhaps, and I agree it was disturbing. I would urge, if it is possible, for the Committee to go out and spend some time on the streets in London because I do not think that is representative, but it is of concern and there will be many reasons why people feel like that.
You are saying some of it is how they feel they are currently treated, and I accept that because I have read their words too, but some of it is about what they have been told very early in life, as I have said before. Some of them will be living in very challenged family backgrounds in a very challenged area. Some of them will not have met the friendly schools officer that I want them to meet first before they meet any other police officer in a more policing situation. Some of them will have had, in their families, real issues, traumatic experiences. The police may have come crashing through the door or there has been a serious crime that has really affected them and, by the way, that is something that we are increasingly training our officers on, adverse childhood experiences.
There is a whole host of reasons and the reason I am going on slightly, apologies, is because I do not want people to think that this is the police’s fault or the police ought to fix it. This is something that is a challenge for our society. It is an outrage that we have young people who are subject to some of the crimes that those young people were talking about. It is an outrage that that is so disproportionate among our black and minority ethnic communities and it is a real sadness to me that there are some young black Londoners who for a variety of reasons would not call the police as the first port of call. That is a real shame to me and I have to redouble our efforts to get out there and get alongside them and help them, together with others, to feel that we are a service they can trust.
Q495 Stuart C. McDonald: That is all ongoing work. There is nothing particularly new that is happening to try to address this issue at the moment.
Cressida Dick: As I say, for example now we are just about up to complement with 300 schools officers, officers for the first time this year in the pupil referral units; some extra investment in outreach of various different sorts; the work that we are doing together with the Mayor of London and others under the violence strategy and the Home Secretary’s Serious Violence Strategy where we are getting funding coming in to third sector schemes that are designed to divert people away from crime, to along the way understand better who the police are, learn to trust the police better. We have, for example, a scheme, fairly new in London, called Divert, which is our own scheme where we have workers who go into the custody office and are very successful. I think we have given you quite low numbers in the pack but since then we have done far more, very high black and minority ethnic representation, getting alongside them at the point just after arrest to help them get away from crime, seeing the custody suite, therefore, as a place where they began, many of them, to make a really positive change in their lives and look back and say, “Thank goodness I met the police”. This kind of thing. We have lots of different things like that going on.
Q496 Stuart C. McDonald: A couple of quick questions on stop and search. At one point you referred to a figure of 89% compliance in relation to body-worn cameras, I think it was. Is that measuring the number of cases where there has been a tape linked to a report of a stop and search? What is that 89% figure referring to?
Cressida Dick: Yes.
Q497 Stuart C. McDonald: Is there any work done to establish or check whether or not the tapes are of any use?
Cressida Dick: Yes, absolutely. We have local monitoring groups and senior officers whose job it is to make sure that there is regular and concerted dip sampling of those tapes. If they reveal a training need or that the quality was not good or something, for some particular reason, that can be fixed, which is unlikely, of course, absolutely, it is their job to go back to the officer and say, “What happened here?” Then we bring in, as I say, members of the community locally to regularly view and they can take random samples.
Q498 Stuart C. McDonald: How long are the tapes kept for?
Cressida Dick: Under normal circumstances, which is part of us complying with what we call MOPI and the law, we keep them for 30 days. If the officer believes that there is a legitimate and proper purpose for keeping them longer they can say so and justify it, but the current operating procedure is that if in that 30-day period nobody needs it for court, nobody needs it for a complaint, there is no other reason why you would want to keep it, it would not be legitimate to keep it longer, so it is just 30 days.
Q499 Stuart C. McDonald: This arises from previous evidence sessions. I think there was some suggestion that 30 days is quite a short period of time and there is a danger that people want to make complaints but by the time they get around to making it or have the confidence to make the complaint the tape no longer exists.
Cressida Dick: Yes. As with so many things around personal data, we are rather caught between two important goods here. For every person who would say, “Could you please keep them for longer just in case?” you have other people who would say, “Destroy them at the earliest opportunity, please”. The law sometimes goes in both directions but where we are is this is inappropriate, 30 days is an appropriate interpretation of the law. Of course for lots of reasons the police officer might wish, two months on, that it had been kept. If they do then get a complaint much later they will want it to be there, but that is the rule. Your young people who you were talking to, I expect that, sadly, many of them think we keep those forever and even maybe some of them probably think we link it up to all sorts of other big brother systems, which we absolutely do not. We take it, it shows the moments just before the interaction, before it is switched on and then the interaction for as long as it is on. We keep it for 30 days, unless there is a legitimate, lawful reason not to.
Q500 Stuart C. McDonald: You referred to academic evidence about stop and search being effective. We have heard witnesses who say there is no evidence that it is effective. Would you be able to send the Committee the titles of the handful of reports that you say back up the case?
Cressida Dick: I absolutely can. The evidence is very mixed. There are some that do big, wide longitudinal studies over large areas where you just cannot see anything, but I think the ones that do show a positive impact are talking about the kind of thing that exactly we are doing and the way we are doing it. Arguably there needs to be more work on this. My own view is that almost whatever the research shows some people will never accept it. I know there is interest from academics in doing a huge, great study and I am in discussions with them about it, but I am not sure that they will find it easy to prove the cause and the effect anyhow, as there are so many other things at play at any one time and secondly, even if they did, I do not think many people would accept it. They would say, “There is something wrong with your methodologies” to contest it. However, I know that it is part of what is helping our work in London now.
Q501 Stuart C. McDonald: It would be useful to see the references. Finally, one quick follow-up on the facial recognition technology, and I agree entirely that we have to have a big debate about the framework and that it should be down to this Parliament after significant public engagement to do that. You spoke about taking the public with you and the importance of that. One huge challenge of that is that there does seem to be a discriminatory effect in that the technology, as I understand it today, creates many more false positives for black and minority ethnic communities and women, I think I am right in saying, than it does for, say, white men.
Cressida Dick: It is always developing and I am sure it will continue to develop in the future. The Committee definitely does not have time for me to talk about our trials and the false positive data and about how some of that has been characterised in the newspapers, which I would put rather differently. Suffice to say, and I imagine this is partly where Mr Loughton is coming from, I believe that we must make sure, obviously, that use of new technologies does not have within the AI or the machine learning or whatever it is implicit inappropriate bias. We need to be alert to that as an issue and as a society. We absolutely do.
Q502 Chair: Could you send us data on the false positives by ethnicity and gender?
Cressida Dick: In our trials?
Chair: Yes.
Cressida Dick: Yes, I think I can.
Chair: That would be very helpful.
Cressida Dick: Whether you would be able to get to the answer that you want, I certainly can tell you, such as they were, the false positives are minimal. The thing that you have to remember of course, and sorry to go on, is that the machine does not make the decision. It is the officer that makes the decision.
Q503 Chair: It would still be very helpful to know that. Commissioner, we are very grateful for your time. It has been a long session. We have asked you many different things, but just because we are about to reach the end of school term, we are about to start the summer holidays, can I ask you very briefly one final question?
We are grateful for the work and your commitment to tackling knife crime and serious violence. Street violence will often increase in the summer. Could you tell us very briefly what is the plan for the summer holidays?
Cressida Dick: I absolutely can. We have, as I have said, schools officers and neighbourhood officers. During the school holidays the schools officers work with young people, particularly those who are at most risk of getting involved in violence, in a whole variety of projects right across London. We have a whole series of big engagements with young people, a whole series of things being delivered by third sector organisations under the auspices of the Met and the Mayor. We will have very significant and I hope appropriate resourcing as we go through the summer months and towards the carnival in enforcement but also in engagement and trying to get alongside young people.
Chair: It would be very helpful if you could send us an update of what the plans are for the summer and any other information about prevention work and engagement work as well as the enforcement work. Commissioner, thank you very much indeed for your time this afternoon. We appreciate it.