The Metropolitan Police needs to be changed urgently. This week’s Panorama programme, showing officers’ racism and hatred of women at Charing Cross police station, is just the latest exposure of its failings.
Over two years ago, Sir Sadiq Khan said he had “already acted to put the Met on a path of far-reaching systematic and cultural reform”. Yet we keep seeing unacceptable behaviour. And on everything from recruiting more woman officers to screening new recruits better, the Met is failing to improve fast enough.
Baroness Louise Casey suggested in her 2023 report into the Met that it would need to be restructured if it couldn’t make progress within two years. That time is up.
If we’re going to get the Met that London deserves, we need it to focus exclusively on London’s priorities. That means relieving the service of its various national responsibilities, leaving its leaders free to concentrate on bringing about the major reforms of culture and attitudes Casey called for.
At present, senior Met officers have an almost impossible job, juggling different roles. They have high-risk national tasks. They protect the royal family and diplomats. They also work to stop terrorism across the country. At the same time is fulfilling these specialist duties, they are expected to tackle crime of every type in the capital.
No other major country has this structure. The US has the FBI for national crimes. Its secret service protects diplomats and the President. State and local police handle everything else. But in London, our police chiefs are forced to split their attention between terrorists and phone snatchers.
Here’s a simple solution: reset the Met by focusing it entirely on policing London, investigating and solving crime in communities across the city. As the Met’s national functions are moved to national bodies, greater powers over crime and policing should be devolved to London’s mayoralty.
This could be done quickly, with only simple legislative measures needed to cement the following changes:
- Transfer national and international police duties from the Met to the National Crime Agency.
- Allow the National Crime Agency to fulfil new duties and give it arresting powers. This could be as simple as a statement saying that the NCA would have the same powers in the areas it was to assume responsibility for as the Met has at present.
- Move management responsibility for the Metropolitan Commissioner from the Home Secretary to the Mayor of London, replacing the current system where the Commissioner has two bosses.
- Move Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection and Royal and Special Protection out of the Met into independent groups reporting to the Home Secretary.
These types of change already have wide support, including from the Police Foundation, my Liberal Democrat colleague and former police officer, Wendy Chamberlain MP, and serving police officers I talked to while running for Mayor last year.
Inevitably, people would argue against this for the sorts of reasons often given for not implementing change.
We would hear that it would be costly. It won’t be, though, because only existing duties would need to be funded. Instead, there would be more focused management by people who would know what their job was.
We would hear that the Met would lose funding, a claim made by people who either cynically misunderstand the plan or are unable to add up.
We would hear that such changes would be a distraction from reform. But we’ve seen the Mayor’s current reforms of the Met fail.
Finally, we would hear that the proposal were too radical and need more consideration. Yet we already know that our system is failing, and that if we don’t reform it the people of London will continue to suffer.
Another benefit of bringing the Met back to its core London functions might be inspiring the next generation of police officers. The reforms I’m proposing could again make good, old-fashioned community policing a job young people dream of having, and help fix the Met’s recruitment crisis.
We owe it to the people of London to have an effective police service. We owe it to the many hard working police officers who are trying to protect Londoners every day. It’s time to get going and reset the Met.
Rob Blackie was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London in 2024. Follow him on Bluesky. Image from the Panorama investigation, which can be watched in full here.
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