has set out Labour’s plans to
overhaul police vetting standards and root out rogue officers, as
he challenged the Tories’ woeful inaction on tackling violence
against women and girls.
In Prime Minister’s Questions today (Wednesday 6 March), the
Labour leader demanded answers on how it was possible for Lady
to have concluded last
week that “there is nothing to stop another [Wayne] Couzens
operating in plain sight”, three years on from the appalling
murder of Sarah Everard.
Starmer highlighted the Tory government’s failure to act despite
repeated warnings over several years, and called on the Prime
Minister to adopt Labour’s plans for mandatory national vetting
standards “that would stop anybody with a history of domestic
abuse or sexual offending being allowed to join the
police”.
Labour says this would end the current discrepancies between the
43 constabularies in recruitment and vetting standards, and
ensure that applicants with a history of domestic abuse, indecent
exposure or sexual assault would be automatically barred from
joining the force.
The party would also introduce automatic suspensions for officers
being investigated for rape, domestic abuse and other sexual
offences, mandate training on violence against women and girls
for all officers, and roll out specialist Rape and Serious Sexual
Offences (RASSO) units in every police force.
Labour is committed to a complete overhaul of the police
standards regime and has appointed former Chief Constable, Olivia
Pinkney, as an advisor to take this work forward.
Lady Angiolini’s inquiry found that Couzens, who had a long
history of allegations of sexual offending dating back nearly 20
years, should never have been allowed to become a police officer.
Her report said that victims who came forward were not taken
seriously enough and a series of “red flags” about his behaviour
were not acted upon.
The Labour leader directly challenged the Prime Minister to
commit to reviewing all indecent exposure allegations against
serving officers in order to identify, investigate and remove
those officers from the police service, as the Angiolini report
recommended, but refused to do so. He also
criticised the staggeringly low charge rates for rape (2.4 per
cent), which are letting victims down, putting them off pursuing
justice and allowing more sex offenders to get away with their
crimes.
MP, leader of the Labour
Party, said at PMQs:
“Sarah Everard’s murder should have been a watershed moment - on
policing reform, on the criminal justice system, on violence
against women and girls. But the sad reality is that victims of
rape who have the courage and bravery to come forward, have just
a 2.4 per cent chance of their perpetrators being caught and
charged within the year.
“Unless things change, the criminal justice system will continue
to fail them. Labour is committed to introducing specialist rape
and sexual offence teams in every force to give victims
specialist support, and confidence that their experience will be
investigated properly.”
Labour has pledged to deliver a step change in tackling violence
against women and girls with a transformative package of measures
to achieve its mission of halving incidents within a
decade.
As part of this mission Labour would:
- Roll out specialist RASSO units in every police force and
require the police to use the tactics and tools normally reserved
for counter-terror operations to go after the most dangerous
serial perpetrators and get them off the streets.
- Introduce ‘Raneem’s Law’ to transform the initial policing
response to reports of domestic abuse, with specialist domestic
abuse workers in 999 control rooms and strict new 24-hour
time-limits for the police to consider the suitability of civil
protection orders to keep victims safe at the earliest
opportunity.
- Bring in mandatory national standards for police vetting,
mandatory training on violence against women and girls in every
police force, and automatic suspensions for officers being
investigated for rape, domestic abuse and other sexual
offences.
