Labour has warned of a “perfect storm” in policing as it issued a call for wholesale reform in the wake of the resignation of Met Commissioner Cressida Dick.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said an overhaul is needed to police training, misconduct proceedings, whistleblowing structures and social media use.
In the wake of the death of Sarah Everard and the exposure of misogynistic behaviour at Charing Cross police station in London, she called on home secretary Priti Patel to make tackling violence against women and girls a strategic policing requirement for all forces, as recommended in a report last year by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.
Ms Cooper said that Dame Cressida’s dramatic departure should not be allowed to create the impression that problems with police are limited to London.
She said that a legacy of funding cuts and Conservative home secretaries “taking their eye off the ball” had led to rising crime, falling numbers of prosecutions and a collapse in public confidence in many parts of the country.
Last year saw numbers of people trusting the police to deal with crime in their area fall behind the proportion who did not – by a margin of 44 to 48 per cent – for the first time since regular polling on the issue by YouGov began, she said.
Ms Cooper told BBC1’s Sunday Morning: “There is a real perfect storm facing policing right now and it is a serious one. Crime is going up, prosecutions are going down, confidence is falling.
“There’s a legacy of damaging cuts, and also these individual toxic cases around the culture. There needs to be a proper serious programme of reform for policing.”
She added: “This is not about just one individual… or one police force. You’ve seen similar issues around… other forces as well… There needs to be a proper serious programme of reform.”
Labour’s plan would see violence against women and girls (VAWG) included in the Home Office’s strategic policing requirement for all forces, formally focusing attention on the need to step up action in response to crime and to improve internal attitudes within the police.
Misconduct proceedings would be overhauled to prevent long delays to hearings and to stop abusive language being dismissed as “banter”, as happened at Charing Cross.
Specific packages of VAWG training would be introduced for new recruits, with updated training for serving officers.
Whistleblowing procedures would be revamped to ensure officers and staff are confident in reporting misconduct.
And officers’ use of social media and messaging platforms would be regularly reviewed to prevent a repeat of the sharing of images from the murders of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
“I strongly believe in the British policing model of policing by consent,” said Ms Cooper. “That’s something we should be proud of.
“But that means we also have to stand up for it and deliver reforms that achieve it. There have been none of those reforms from the home secretary.
“Labour has set out a plan …including reforms to training, to misconduct and at their heart making sure that violence against women and girls is part of the Strategic Policing Requirement given to police forces by the Home Office so that you challenge internal cultural issues and [improve] policing in the country.”
Ms Cooper said that confidence in the police in tackling violence against women and girls had become a particular problem after the murder of Ms Everard by a serving officer and the drop the rape charge rate to just 1.3 per cent.
“Confidence in the police has dropped on this home secretary’s watch and her failure to act is letting both the police and our communities down,” she said.
“Successive Conservative home secretaries have stood back and shrugged their shoulders over police standards, choosing only to cut or criticise the police instead.
“That is not good enough – policing, and trust in policing, are far too important for the home secretary to ignore in this way. Priti Patel’s failure of leadership is undermining confidence in policing and the crucial British principle of policing by consent.
“Standards matter – for the police, for victims of crime, and for our communities. It is in all our interests to finally get this right.”
