The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse) With
permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement
on the publication of the report of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of
constabulary and fire and rescue services into the Metropolitan
police’s counter-corruption arrangements. In June last year, the
Home Secretary came to the House to report on the findings of the
Daniel Morgan independent panel. The panel’s report detailed a
litany of historical...Request free
trial
The Minister for Crime and Policing ()
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a
statement on the publication of the report of Her Majesty’s
inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services into
the Metropolitan police’s counter-corruption arrangements.
In June last year, the Home Secretary came to the House to report
on the findings of the Daniel Morgan independent panel. The
panel’s report detailed a litany of historical failings by the
Metropolitan police in respect of multiple
investigations—failings that irreparably damaged the chances of a
successful prosecution for Daniel Morgan’s brutal killing. My
thoughts, and I am sure all Members’ thoughts, remain with
Daniel’s family. I first met them over a decade ago.
As part of the Government’s response to that report, the Home
Secretary commissioned the inspectorate to undertake an
inspection of the Metropolitan police’s current approach to
counter-corruption arrangements. I should note at the outset that
the inspectorate did make some positive findings. The
Metropolitan police remains an exemplar in investigating serious
corruption and has good arrangements in place to support
whistleblowers. It has also almost eliminated the backlog of
officers awaiting security vetting, which was identified as a
problem in a previous report. The inspectorate found no evidence
that the force deliberately sought to frustrate the work of the
Daniel Morgan independent panel, but the broad thrust and
overarching conclusions of the report are troubling.
This inspection was commissioned to provide assurance for Daniel
Morgan’s family and the wider public that the force had learned
from failings in the past and had robust arrangements in place to
prevent, identify and tackle corruption in its ranks. I am afraid
that it is deeply disappointing that, in the light of the
findings of this report, I cannot provide this assurance to the
House. Indeed, the inspectorate felt that the Metropolitan police
approach suggested
“a degree of indifference to the risk of corruption”.
This is alarming.
Corruption poses a significant threat wherever it rears its ugly
head. If it is allowed to take root and wrap its tentacles around
organisations and people, the potential impact is profound. This
is especially true for policing—an institution that relies so
heavily on public confidence and trust. The inspectorate’s report
outlines a range of issues across all the systems that police
forces employ to identify and manage corruption risks. This
includes a failure to properly monitor recruits who could pose
risks and to routinely share routine intelligence on
officers.
The report paints a worrying picture of the Metropolitan police’s
approach to exhibit and property management, creating
opportunities for those tempted to abuse their position, and
posing a risk to investigations.
The inspectorate found that there were more than 2,000 warrant
cards unaccounted for. This is particularly concerning, coming as
it does just over a year after a police officer abused his
position to murder a young woman in a heinous crime that shocked
our country to its core.
The report concludes that the Metropolitan police is not able to
confirm whether officers working in the most sensitive areas of
policing have the right levels of vetting. Furthermore, despite
repeated recommendations and good progress made in this area in
other forces across England and Wales, the force cannot
proactively monitor its IT systems—a crucial tool in identifying
corruption. In total, the report contains five causes of concern,
two areas for improvement and 20 recommendations for change.
Yesterday, the Home Secretary wrote to the Metropolitan Police
Commissioner and the Mayor of London to set out her expectation
that they respond to her with a clear action plan to remedy these
failings. I welcome the deputy commissioner’s statement
yesterday, recognising the need for comprehensive action. I put
particular emphasis here on the responsibilities of the Mayor of
London. Beyond the statutory responsibility on the Mayor to
respond to the inspectorate’s report within 56 days, it is
incumbent on City Hall to hold the Metropolitan police’s
leadership to account for responding to past failings. This
clearly has not happened here, and I urge the Mayor to work with
the Home Office to ensure that a new commissioner can address
these failings.
As she said in her statement to the House last year, the Home
Secretary intends to update the House on the progress made in
responding to the wide range of issues raised in the Daniel
Morgan independent panel report. The Met Police published their
response last Friday to the recommendations directed at them and,
now that we have the inspectorate’s report, we expect to provide
our overarching update soon.
Finally, I remind the House that the Home Secretary has also
commissioned HMICFRS to undertake a wider inspection of vetting,
counter-corruption and forces’ approach to identifying and
tackling misogyny in their ranks. That is looking across England
and Wales and will provide a crucial evidence base for part 2 of
the Angiolini inquiry and inform any broader policy or
legislative changes that might be required.
The report comes at a time when the Metropolitan Police are under
intense scrutiny. I have found myself at the Dispatch Box
discussing the force’s culture and standards all too frequently
in recent months. As someone who over the years has worked
alongside the Met and seen at first hand the incredible things
that they are capable of achieving, I know there are thousands of
officers, staff and volunteers across the organisation who
perform their duties with skill, professionalism and pride every
day. However, when things go wrong, it is vital to acknowledge
that fact and take every necessary step to ensure that the
failings of the past are not repeated. I commend this statement
to the House.
3.00pm
(Croydon Central) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement—three
hours’ advance sight, which is very good.
Yesterday, some of us gathered on Westminster Bridge to remember
the Westminster Bridge attack five years ago. We remembered how
our police ran into danger to protect us, and we remembered PC
, who lost his life. It is with
great sadness that we go from a day commemorating the very best
of policing to discussing a report which, I am afraid, contains
some very significant criticisms of the Metropolitan Police.
It is now 35 years since Daniel Morgan was murdered in a pub car
park in south London—35 years for his family to wait for justice.
I pay tribute to them, as the Minister has done. Daniel Morgan’s
son lives in my constituency, and I know this report will be
deeply upsetting for him and his family. The report lays bare
issues of real concern. It is highly critical and tells a damning
story of police corruption, of lessons not learned and of flawed
procedures. The inspector noted with dismay that no one,
“had adopted the view that this must never happen again”.
The Met must accept all the recommendations included in the
report and implement them in full with all possible speed.
As the Minister rightly noted, there was praise too in this
report. For example, it was clear that the Met’s homicide
investigation arrangements bear little resemblance to those of 35
years ago. The force solves the vast majority of homicides it
investigates, as I can testify to in my own patch in Croydon.
Londoners need and deserve a police service they can not only
trust, but be proud of. Whether on racism, homophobia, violence
against women or corruption, we need to see the urgent reforms
that will make that a reality. The outgoing commissioner must
begin the process of implementation, but it must be a top
priority for the new commissioner, who will carry forward the
work.
However, the issues raised have national consequences. The Home
Office must not stand back. Real leadership is needed. The Home
Secretary and her Department must commit to engaging seriously
with the issue of police reform, to avoid repeating such a
scandal and to avoid a lifetime of pain and hurt for families
like Daniel Morgan’s.
Labour has called for an overhaul of police standards, including
reviews of vetting, training, misconduct proceedings and use of
social media. It is vital that the Minister takes steps to
identify whether the problems highlighted in the report are
systemic in other forces across the country. The report shows
that 50 people a year who had committed offences were recruited
to the Met, including some who had connections to known
criminals.
Given the seriousness of that finding, has the Minister asked all
forces urgently to inform the Home Office of the number of new
recruits every year who have committed offences? If he has, will
he publish that data now? If he has not, why on earth has he not?
We know that 2,000 warrant cards are unaccounted for. Has he
asked all forces to inform the Home Office immediately how many
of their warrant cards are unaccounted for? If he has, will he
agree to publish that data?
In addition, the report notes that the Met does not know whether
all those in sensitive posts have been cleared to the level
needed. Is the Minister checking that nationally? The report also
notes serious concerns about the storage and security of firearms
in the Met. That is very worrying. Will the Minister commit to
looking into that nationally?
We have a Home Office inquiry into culture and standards in the
Met, which the Home Office has refused to put on a statutory
footing. How can the Minister be sure that the Angiolini inquiry
will not fall foul of the same stumbling blocks encountered by
the Daniel Morgan inquiry and mentioned in this report?
The original Daniel Morgan inquiry recommended a statutory duty
of candour for police officers, but the Government opposed
Labour’s amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts
Bill to achieve that. Given the challenges faced to get
information during the inquiry that we see in the report, will
the Government change their mind and back our proposal?
The Home Secretary has promised a review of vetting standards,
but the terms of reference have only recently been published and
we do not know when the review will report. What is the Home
Office doing in the meantime to ensure that vetting across the
country is being carried out to the highest and most rigorous
standards?
The Minister highlighted the role of the Mayor of London. The
report clearly states that the joint MPS and Crown Prosecution
Service review of the Daniel Morgan case in 2011-12 identified
opportunities for organisational learning, but it is clear that
the MPS paid little, if any, attention to the joint report when
it was published. Why did the previous Mayor of London totally
fail to ensure that action was taken after that 2012 report?
Finally, the Minister has said he will provide an overarching
update in response to both this report and the recommendations in
the panel report. That is welcome, but can he give us a concrete
timeline for it?
I end by saying that the role of the HMICFRS was not to
reinvestigate the murder, but to consider the lessons to be
learned from what has happened. The family of Daniel have not
seen justice done for his murder, and it is with them that our
thoughts must remain.
The various points that the hon. Lady raised in the first half of
her remarks will be addressed by Her Majesty’s inspectorate as it
looks at vetting procedures across the whole country. The purpose
of the investigation commissioned by my right hon. Friend the
Home Secretary was to show the leadership that she is looking for
and to expose what we now know to be the systematic failings of
the organisation and its failure to address the problems of the
report over recent years. We will know more on the questions that
the hon. Lady rightly asks about the worrying issues raised by
this report when HMI concludes its national inspection, which I
hope will be shortly.
On the hon. Lady’s point about the duty of candour, as I
explained during the debate on the consideration of Lords
amendments to the Policing Bill, we changed the regulations to
make it a disciplinary offence, subject to dismissal, not to
co-operate with an investigation, which we believe is a stronger
sanction. The inspection report said that the Metropolitan Police
had co-operated with the independent panel.
I am disappointed at the hon. Lady’s lack of attention to the
oversight mechanism of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
Over the past five years, the Mayor of London has been in control
of an entire organisation whose job it is to hold the
Metropolitan Police to account and to drive standards up.
Certainly, in the four years between 2008 and 2012, when I was
Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, that was exactly what we
tried to do. We initiated a race and faith inquiry that looked
more widely at culture across the whole of the Met Police to try
to drive improvement.
I would hope that the Mayor—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker,
is there any chance you could ask the right hon. Member for
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford () to stop barracking from a
sedentary position? This is a very serious matter that must be
addressed and taken seriously by all levels of Government, and
that includes the Mayor of London. Given that that is the entire
purpose of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, I am afraid
I am not willing to ignore the fact that the holding of the
organisation to account is primarily the function of City
Hall.
We at the Home Office have our part to play in setting national
standards, and we will absolutely do that, whether that is
reviewing with the College of Policing the professional practice
around vetting, as we are doing, or changing the regulations if
we need to do so. In the immediate short term, however, the
statutory obligation to respond lies with the Mayor of London and
I hope he will fulfil his obligations within the 56 days set in
law by this House.
(Dudley South) (Con)
As the son of a retired police officer, I know the incredible
work that the majority of police do to fight crime and keep us
safe. When officers breach the high standards expected of them,
it fundamentally undermines the trust that their work relies on.
Will my right hon. Friend join me in condemning the behaviour
revealed in this report, and send a clear message that this kind
of behaviour cannot be tolerated in any police force anywhere in
the country?
I applaud my hon. Friend’s sentiment. As someone who, like me,
has an intimate knowledge of policing, I am sure he will
acknowledge that there will be thousands of police officers up
and down the land who are as disappointed and distressed by the
revelations today as we are. They want to work in a profession—a
vocation—of which they can be proud and which they know is
trusted by the public. Making sure that this kind of corruption
and behaviour is rooted out will be as much a part of their
motivation as it is ours.
(Lewisham West and Penge)
(Lab)
I was six years old when Daniel Morgan was murdered in my
constituency just round the corner from where I lived. His brutal
murder shocked our community, and it was made worse by the fact
that no one was convicted and that last year’s inquiry cited
institutional corruption in the Met. Daniel’s family have
campaigned for justice for 35 years. No other family should ever
have to go through this, yet yesterday’s damning report found
that not nearly enough has been done to ensure that it does not
happen again. Will the Minister personally ensure that the next
Met commissioner cleans up this failing force?
I will certainly do my best to make sure that that is the case.
As I say, the Home Secretary has written to the Mayor of London
and the current commissioner asking for an assertive action plan
to bring about these changes. I am sure the hon. Lady will have
noted that HMI has put a limit of 12 months on the 20
improvements and changes that it needs to see, and it will
require really assertive action by the Met police to get all that
work done within that 12-month period. Many people in this House
will have had involvement or contact with the Morgan family. I
myself was privileged to meet his mother on a number of occasions
when I was deputy Mayor for policing, and indeed, along with
other Members across the House, I pressed for the original
inquiry. Given our commitment to their campaign and the
incredible dedication they have shown, we now have a duty to do
exactly as the hon. Lady says and make sure it does not happen
again.
(Twickenham) (LD)
As the Minister himself has said, the regularity with which he
has had to come to the Dispatch Box to answer questions about the
culture, standards and misjudgments of the Metropolitan police is
alarming. Yesterday’s shocking report is just the latest in a
long list of recent failings. Thousands of dedicated rank and
file police officers work very hard and put themselves at risk
every day to protect us. They, and millions of Londoners, deserve
leadership in the Met that they can trust and have confidence in,
not leaders who have “indifference” to the risks of corruption.
Will the Minister confirm today that the new Metropolitan Police
Commissioner appointment will not just be made by the Home Office
and a Prime Minister who is himself under criminal investigation
but will secure the approval of the Mayor of London and be
subject to a cross-party vote of the Home Affairs Committee and
the London Assembly’s police and crime committee?
The process and appointment of the Met commissioner are
established in law, and we cannot obviate that, but we are all, I
hope, committed to making sure that the person we appoint will
bring about the changes that we are all seeking as well as
continue the fight against crime in the capital. In the meantime,
as the current commissioner exits, I believe that in the proposed
acting commissioner and current deputy commissioner we have an
individual of integrity and commitment who has already made very
welcome public statements about driving forward change.
(Islington South and
Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing convention to be
waived so that I can speak from the Back Benches on this matter.
Alastair Morgan, Daniel’s brother, has been campaigning for some
justice for his brother for 35 years and I have stood alongside
him for the past 17. The Minister referred to the “original
report”. It was not the original report. There have been many,
many inquiries. There have been inquiries into inquiries. This
has been going on for years and years, with corruption layered
upon corruption and nobody ever telling the truth. It is no
wonder, in those circumstances, that Alastair has said that the
Metropolitan police
“cared more about its own tatty reputation than solving my
brother’s murder.”
Now what do we see? We see an official report that states that it
has
“found no evidence that someone, somewhere, had adopted the view
that this must never happen again.”
Nobody even cares if it happens again. What is the Minister going
to do about that? What are we going to do about the Met?
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her commitment to the
family campaign as well. As I explained, we have written to the
Mayor and the commissioner demanding a plan of action and that
they respond, as they have to in law, to the inspectorate with
exactly that—an assertive, committed plan for change. Certainly
the public statements that I have seen from the deputy
commissioner indicate his personal commitment. Pleasingly, he
made a particular point of saying that the police have not given
up on the investigation and their attempt to try to catch
Daniel’s killers. I hope that we will see a conclusion to that
investigation as soon as possible.
(Huddersfield)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Daniel Morgan case is one of those that I am most familiar
with as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on
miscarriages of justice. If it were not for a Welsh solicitor
called Glyn Maddocks, who has tirelessly followed this and never
given up on it, we would not be where we are today. I pay tribute
to him, his work, and the support he has given to the
miscarriages of justice group. This is a very important occasion.
I am a little sad that the Minister has made it a bit party
political in blaming the Mayor. The fact is that we are faced
with a tremendous crisis in the Met and in any police force where
the relationship between the police breaks down and becomes
sloppy, and we see—I did the research on this and I was
astonished by it—the close links between senior Met police and
organised crime. Surely that was wrong and it has to be sorted
out.
I also pay tribute, as the hon. Gentleman has, to the entire team
that have supported the family. I met them when I was deputy
Mayor for policing. I have to confess that when I heard the story
I was open-mouthed at what was revealed, hence the strong support
I gave to the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the
Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), for an inquiry. Admittedly, as
the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury () said, it is not the
first, but hopefully it will bring us to some kind of conclusion
on this matter. I was not seeking to make a party political
point, merely to point out that there is a direct responsibility
at City Hall—one that I took when I was doing the job—to drive
forward the conclusion to this matter not only to reach some kind
of closure for the family, but to ensure significant change in
the organisation that will mean that this can never happen
again.
(Vauxhall)
(Lab/Co-op)
We are back here again discussing the police. Some of the issues
in this report about the vetting of police officers and the fact
that some had links to known criminals will be quite shocking for
a number of my constituents, who continue to be stopped and
searched. Some of those constituents are on the gangs matrix,
which had such a massive impact on their life in terms of finding
jobs, access to benefits, and ability to rent. The Minister will
know that in 2019 a freedom of information request revealed that
a person as young as 13 was on the gangs matrix. How will he help
to restore confidence in our communities who want to work with
the police in addressing some of the issues, when we have known
criminals involved, people not being vetted properly and some of
my young people continuing to be on the gangs matrix?
The solution to the problem of building trust between London’s
various communities and the police is complex, but there are a
variety of tools that we can deploy. First, we can make sure that
the force better reflects the population of London. I am pleased
that we are working closely with City Hall and the Met on their
recruitment and diversity agenda, which is an important one that
has been ongoing for some time. At the same time, we need to make
sure that we are recruiting the right people, and this
investigation has unearthed problems in our doing that. We need
to make sure that the vetting net is as tight as possible so that
we are getting in the right people with the right values who are
able to deal with the hon. Lady’s constituents and others with
integrity and respect to achieve the end we want to achieve,
which is lower crime in the capital. That does require, as she
says, that people know that when they meet a police officer in
the street, or they are dealt with even under stop and search,
they are dealing with somebody who has been through a rigorous
process. Over the next 12 months we will monitor this closely and
work with City Hall to make sure that that is exactly what it
introduces.
(Westminster North) (Lab)
We have to rely on an efficient and effective police service that
has the trust of all its communities, and we know from recent
reports that the Met in particular has taken an absolute
battering. Over the past decade, we lost 20,000 police. In the
past couple of years, there has been a rapid ramping up to get
back those police numbers and to deal with the issue of natural
wastage. This is an incredible pressure on recruitment and
vetting. What assessment has the Minister made of the
capacity—not only within the Met, but nationwide—to ensure that
speed of recruitment is not leading to the inclusion of people
who have no right to be on the streets of our capital, policing
it?
The hon. Lady is right that the rapid recruitment has put strains
on the system, but we have been monitoring it very closely to
ensure that the system is able to cope, and I believe that it is.
I know she is not suggesting that the vast majority of recruits
are not right-thinking and correct in their values, and I hope
and believe that is the case. One of the improvements that the
inspectorate did note that the Metropolitan police has achieved
over the past couple of years is an elimination almost of the
vetting backlog, which just three or four years ago stood at
something like 37,000, astonishingly. That has now been almost
eliminated. That is a silver lining to the cloud of this report.
As far as vetting is concerned, we have debated that just
recently in the House. There are improvements that need to be
made, not least on the monitoring of social media, which has just
started in the Metropolitan police. It is an area to which we
need to pay constant attention if we are to build that trust with
London’s communities.
(North East Fife)
(LD)
This review today is rightly about what the Metropolitan police
is doing now, but it has resulted from the Daniel Morgan report,
and there are still outstanding issues arising from that report,
as referred to by the right hon. Member for Islington South and
Finsbury (), who is no longer in her
place. Indeed, my constituent, a former serving police officer,
approached me for support because he had a complaint in relation
to his treatment by the Metropolitan police while he was involved
in the Morgan inquiry, and he has had no satisfactory outcome. He
has now approached the IOPC. Will the Minister meet me to discuss
how we can get some degree of finding for my constituent?
I am hesitant to intervene in an independent process. Given the
hon. Lady’s experience in policing, she will know that. If she
thinks a meeting with me and her constituent would be useful once
the IOPC has concluded, I would be more than happy to do so.
Dame (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
It has been a torrid time for the Met, but I am not so concerned
about the Met; I am concerned about constituents of mine and
those of us all who worry about policing. We had the report just
last week about child q People in my
constituency and elsewhere, and particularly black parents, black
pupils and parents of black pupils, are worried about what the
impact is on them. I know that the response has to be done in 12
months, and I worry that that will divert the Met to dealing with
corruption, which obviously has to be dealt with. Can the
Minister give some comfort from the Dispatch Box today that the
issues of racism and inappropriate action against child q will be dealt
with much quicker than waiting for an IOPC report? Action needs
to happen quicker. Tackling corruption has to happen, but not
just that.
As I said in the urgent question on child q
I am hopeful that the IOPC will conclude its investigation on
that matter shortly, and then we can quickly learn the lessons
from that, exactly as the hon. Lady says, and hopefully ensure
that that does not happen again. Just to be clear on the
timeline, the Mayor has a statutory duty to respond to this
inspection within 56 days with an action plan. The IOPC has put a
12-month time limit on implementing its 20 recommendations for
change. Some may be done quicker than that, and some have already
started. For example, my understanding is that inexplicably, the
Met police is the only force in the country that does not have
the software in place to monitor the inappropriate use of its
systems. The work to implement that has started already, and I
hope that will done before 12 months. Such is the importance of
this issue, I am happy to commit to coming back to the House at
some future point, when completion is in sight or done on all
these 20 matters, and report that to the Members who are
concerned.
(Rhondda) (Lab)
A corrupt network of police officers, including senior officers,
and journalists, including their senior management, private
investigators and senior management at News International were
all involved in the cover-up here. It is one of the biggest
instances of corruption and one of the most painful ones we have
witnessed in many years. Is it not time that we introduced into
statute law a new offence of misconduct in public office? It is a
common-law offence that is difficult to prosecute and to lay out
the parameters of. We should put it in statute so that those who
commit it and those who incite others to do it can be sent to
prison.
I cannot comment on the hon. Gentleman’s claims, not least
because happily, as the deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner
has confirmed, this is an ongoing investigation. They have not
given up, and they should not give up. However, I understand the
point that the hon. Gentleman is making in general. While a
number of offences could be committed in a similar hypothetical
situation, such as conspiracy, it may be the case that he has a
point that we need to consider.
(Brentford and Isleworth)
(Lab)
We have yet another report raising serious concerns about the
Met, but also a number of questions that are applicable to all
police forces in the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for
Croydon Central () said. One issue that has been
raised with me by a senior officer, and that applies nationally,
is that officers who are found guilty of gross misconduct are
often not only reinstated, but sometimes promoted. What is the
Minister doing with the Met, police forces around the country and
the complaints system to address this issue?
I am sure the hon. Lady understands that where the office of
constable is concerned, matters of discipline, dismissal or other
punishments are effectively an independent process. The
punishment is decided by panels that have independent legally
qualified chairs. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on
the various decisions she has talked about. Having said that, we
constantly pay attention to how the disciplinary process is
impacting on the integrity of UK policing. If adjustments are
required, as they were two years ago, we make them.
(Eltham) (Lab)
Daniel Morgan was murdered 35 years ago, and this whole inquiry
has been consistently bedevilled by police corruption. I do not
think this report gets us to the bottom of the issue. We have to
go much, much further. The report tells us that there has been a
loose association with confidentiality and security for evidence,
and that has been consistent over all these years that we have
been trying to get to the bottom of this case. The Minister now
has to accept that we have to have a root and branch inquiry. He
has admitted himself that he has had to come to this Dispatch Box
too many times to apologise for the Metropolitan police. This
single investigation will not get to the bottom of it; we need
something much more fundamental, such as an independent
inquiry.
As I say, HMI is looking at these issues more widely across the
whole of UK policing, and we will learn some lessons from that
report. But we should not forget that the Commissioner of the Met
herself has commissioned Dame to look at the internal
culture of the Met, and that will give us some indications of
where we should go next, if at all. Beyond that, similarly, stage
2 of the Angiolini review, which will look at this issue more
widely, will be able to give us some information as to where we
should go next, if at all.
This is a building picture. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that
this is a very distressing, alarming and scandalous story that
has run for far too many years. We have a duty in this House to
try to get to the bottom of what happened and to make changes to
ensure that it does not happen again, but that will not be a
silver-bullet revelation; it will be a building picture, and this
report is part of that. The report informs our work for now, and
we will look to the future to see where we go next.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his statement. While an apology is, I am
sure, welcomed by the family, perhaps what would be more welcome
is steps being taken to prevent this from happening again. Does
he accept that there is a duty of care, and will he undertake to
implement the necessary changes, which the report highlights in
great detail, to ensure that the Met police continues to be a
premium police service that is respected globally, as it has been
for many years?
The hon. Gentleman asks his question very eloquently, and I
completely agree with him. My primary concern in this affair is
to get justice for the family of Daniel Morgan, who have
campaigned for many years on this issue—a truly scandalous story
that has involved many of us on both sides of the House. My
second concern is to ensure that the Metropolitan police is fit
to serve Londoners and that they can have trust in it. As
somebody who, I must confess, has great affection for the Met,
having worked for it in the past and seen the incredible things
of which it is capable, I say to the officers of the Metropolitan
police who want to know that they are working for exactly the
organisation that the hon. Gentleman describes—one that is deeply
respected across the world, not just for its ability to catch
every murderer or to stop knife crime in London or to put more
rapists behind bars, but for its internal conduct and culture of
ethics and integrity—that that is what we have to be about.
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