Examination of Witness (Questions 120
- 139)
THURSDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2002
MR KEVIN
MORRIS
120. And in your experience are they sufficiently
rigorous?
(Mr Morris) The HMI's office?
121. Yes.
(Mr Morris) Their inspecting is extremely rigorous,
it is whether a chief constable could ignore them or perhaps do
little about it and the same problems then arise the next year
in reports. That tends to suggest that there is a need to change
but whether a whole new unit has to be created is another matter.
If there is a Standards Unit we will work closely with them because
it is 118 at the moment, changing every day, BCU commanders who
are going to be very closely scrutinised and will probably receive
much of the attention of the Standards Unit in the forthcoming
years.
122. You would agree that the persistent large
variations in detection rates, sickness rates and retirement rates
around the country is a problem that the Inspectorate does not
seem to have solved?
(Mr Morris) If I could take you up on that point.
The detection rate in Dyfed Powys looks impressive, the detection
rate in the Metropolitan Police looks fairly poor, or very poor
depending on your perspective, but the Metropolitan Police probably
detect more crimes than they get in Dyfed Powys in a year. You
have to be extremely careful about that. You also have to be extremely
careful with percentages because two per cent of nothing is still
nothing. If you are making comparisons you have to be certain
you are comparing like with like. The sickness is clearly of concern
but one force that has a retirement on ill health pension record
that is regarded as good also has a very great problem in deploying
officers out on the streets because they have lots of them in
the offices who are not fit enough to go out on the streets. They
also had one of the largest drops in detection rates last year.
If you are going to make the comparisons, I accept the need to
do it but you have to be very clear about why you are looking
at it and what the impact is of doing it. Sadly, if you concentrate
on statistics, as we have seen with the education profession,
and my wife is a GP so I know what they can do as well, the tendency
is to work at the figures and not work at improving the service.
123. One problem that has been put to us is
that it is virtually impossible for a chief constable to do anything
other than take account of what the medical advice is. Whereas
in other professions the medical certificate would be one of the
factors you would take into account in deciding what to do with
someone, it is absent in the police. If the chief constable had
discretion he would perhaps be better placed to address these
high levels of retirement through alleged sickness.
(Mr Morris) I think in the vast majority of cases
the sickness is actually real, it is not alleged. Some of the
officers feel very upset at having to leave.
124. In that case why by a factor of six to
one are there these huge variations from one force to another?
I take into account the point you make about the different metropolitan
areas.
(Mr Morris) If you look at the GMP, the GMP took the
decision that all their officers must be fit for public order
duties. So they have one of the fittest forces but also one of
the highest numbers of people being cast on sick. We are dealing
with the rash rather than the underlying problems. I have got
30 years in in August, it would still be better for me to suddenly
develop a bad back in August and go off on a sick pension than
it would be to retire under normal circumstances. I think that
is absolutely outrageous, that any officer could be put in that
position and could benefit from that or somebody could retire
on a much shorter length of time than 30 years and receive a better
position than somebody who completes 30 years.
125. Yes.
(Mr Morris) I think the underlying problem is wrong.
The second thing is that I think when forces have taken considerable
steps to deal with people, the courts have said the regulations
state quite clearly they must be fit for operational duties and
that means going out on the street. If you have got a bad back,
a bad leg, an elbow, a shoulder that cannot move, you cannot go
outside and arrest people so people are then in a position to
say "I have to go out on sick".
126. You would like to see some discretion no
doubt?
(Mr Morris) I think some of the officers would as
well. In my experience, some have been quite upset that they have
felt they could still continue in a more sedentary role but the
service would not allow them to.
Chairman: I can well understand that. That is
helpful.
Mr Cameron
127. If I could just pick up a question that
Mr Malins asked Sir David which was this fascinating point about
the powers which will be given to traffic wardens to let them
have all the powers of a constable in terms of stopping traffic.
Are you aware of this?
(Mr Morris) Yes.
128. What do you think it means?
(Mr Morris) I am afraid lawyers will interpret what
it means exactly. I would like to see traffic wardens with a greater
degree of power to stop moving traffic for traffic offences.
129. Would that include breathalysers for instance?
(Mr Morris) No, I think that would be problematic
to them. We are talking about, in the main now, local authority
traffic wardens having the power to stop traffic which perhaps,
as Sir David said, had driven the wrong way down a one way street
whereas perhaps before they did not have that power. The difference
with a police officer is if you are driving home and I am of a
mind to stop you, I have the power to stop and just ask questions
about your driving licence, your insurance, etc.. Now that general
power just to stop traffic, hopefully not just because I feel
like it but because I feel there may be something wrong, is perhaps
something I would not like to see traffic wardens have. If they
have seen an offence being committed with a moving vehicle then
it seems ludicrous that they cannot intervene and deal with it
swiftly.
Mr Cameron: I think we need to pursue that when
we have the Minister in front of us. It is a very good point.
Chairman
130. Just going back to disciplinary proceedings.
You will be aware that two or three years ago some changes were
made to the disciplinary proceedings, for example a chief constable
was given the power in extreme cases to hold a hearing in the
absence of a defendant, as it were, if he thought the defendant
was malingering; so far as I know that has never been used. It
remains a mystery to those of us who are not police officers how
it is possible to string these out for years at a time with officers
suspended on full pay. I wondered if you would be able to assist
with inquiries?
(Mr Morris) I think you would have to take it up on
the individual cases, why they did not do it, of course. It does
seem odd that somebody could do that. If you will forgive me,
I will take it the other way round, also. Sometimes we have officers
suspended who ought not to be and the review of that suspension
has not taken place.
131. Officers suspended for very trivial incidents
which could be resolved while they are still working.
(Mr Morris) I think most forces, and I am certain
of this, have got procedures that would review the suspension
and you could have circumstances where an officer would be quite
happy to resign but cannot because they are on suspension. I think
that needs to be looked at as well. Your point is well made, Chairman,
that it does seem to be an anomaly that the power was given and
has not been used but without all the details of each individual
case I could not explain why. It seems odd that nobody has tried
it.
132. The fact that you have mentioned you would
like to see it, is that something that would require legislation
or a change to the rules or is it something that could be done
now if a chief constable wanted to do it?
(Mr Morris) Which particular change are you referring
to that I mentioned?
133. The point about not suspending for long
periods of time in answer to a trivial offence, or allowing them
to resign early if that is what they want to do.
(Mr Morris) I think this is the difficulty we have
in the police. I think it is fair to say the police regulations
were brought in because of the appalling way police officers had
been treated in the past and they were given special regulations
to cover and protect them but there was not the employment legislation
in the past. I think the time has come for us to look seriously
at employment legislation and say whether it actually covers us.
If it does then the need for some of those regulations can be
removed. It could well be if the Home Secretary has a mind to
that he could sack a chief constable under the employment regulations.
If that is the case then they also must have the right to appeal
under that and take him to a tribunal and if he does not do it
properly he could be taken to task by that tribunal. There are
reasons for us to look at it in some detail about why we cannot
adopt employment legislation now. Given that many of our staff
-UNISON made the point it annoys people being called "civilians"—our
support staff who are not badged police officers are treated in
that way, maybe there are grounds for saying it would simplify
things and it would be quite clear as to how people would be treated
and what safeguards would be in place for their benefit if they
are mistreated.
Mr Cameron
134. Are you saying that if police officers,
PCs, were subject to employment law you would be able to scrap
a lot of the disciplinary proceedings that make managing local
police forces so difficult?
(Mr Morris) I think the problem I have, and this is
where my argument will fail a little bit, if not completely, is
that the difficulty there is the public need to see that police
officers are held to account for the powers that they use. That
is different from the regulations that govern whether they are
dismissed from the service, except that some of the regulations
will also include that.
135. Two points have been obsessing me. One
is that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said that a lot of
complaints against police officers do not come from the public
but come from management effectively and yet you have to go through
this long disciplinary procedure.
(Mr Morris) Yes.
136. In a conversation I had in my constituency
one of your members said "my problem is an appallingly performing
constable but once he has done his two years' probation there
is nothing I can do about it". If you move to a situation
where you have employment law rather than disciplinary procedures,
would you not solve some of these problems?
(Mr Morris) I think there is a view within the service
that that would make it easier. If they have not tried sacking
a non-badged officer, a civilian to use the phrase they do not
seem to like, they will not realise how difficult it still is.
However, I think it would simplify matters to have just one way
of doing it.
137. One law for everybody.
(Mr Morris) One point I would like to make, and this
is often overlooked, is we do not set out to recruit lazy and
incompetent officers and we do not train them to be lazy and incompetent,
something happens along the way, which is a management issue that
we must tackle, that allows them to become so disgruntled that
they do not perform well. That is unacceptable as well as the
officer themselves not performing.
Mr Cameron: Absolutely. Thank you.
Chairman
138. And also people just get into a rut and
would perhaps be happier doing something else.
(Mr Morris) It could well be. You then wonder how
some officers with 30 years' service—I could not do it now—still
work shifts, still go out every day and night doing a fantastic
job and feel so upset that some of their younger colleagues do
not feel that way. It is so possible for officers to be highly
motivated and so willing to do all sorts of things throughout
their service but that is the strength of managing people who
are so different and the service is not good at that, we tend
to be very task oriented and not people centred.
139. Can I just switch to one other subject.
There has been talk of the need to keep people longer in specialist
detective squads. I recognise that there is a balance to be made,
that once you have achieved a level of expertise you need to maintain
it and make good use of it, but one of the things we discovered
in the 1970s and 1980s was that these squads became a law unto
themselves sometimes and began to behave badly, putting it as
generously as I can. One of the conclusions that was come to after
the investigations was that people were spending too long in detective
squads and there needed to be some sort of movement between beat
policing and detection and the idea that you went into a detective
squad and never came back into uniform perhaps was not a good
one. Do you agree we are now in danger of going back to the past?
(Mr Morris) I do not think any of us would want to
go back to the situation that some forces found themselves in.
The level of corruption was frightening. As one officer put it
to me, when you realise that the bad people are inside the organisation
as well as outside, there is very little that you feel you can
do about it, and none of us would want to be in that position.
That being said tenure, which was the answer to it all, created
enormous problems and was incredibly expensive because we were
training people for a short period of time. This is where you
have to take a bigger picture of all of it. The service, until
recently, had not got a standardised appraisal system for the
whole country for skills and abilities, the training and the way
we look at our officers and making sure they are motivated has
not been 100 per cent. You have to come down to say that it is
a management issue as to whether somebody who is under-performing
or is not doing their job properly because they are doing unlawful
things, that is something the management should be tackling.
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