The IPCC - back from the brink? Not quite.

At first glance, I thought that Home Office Mandarins had been inspired by my recent posts on the IPCC (here and here) before drafting Theresa May's statement to the House of Commons on police integrity yesterday but upon closer expection, I realised they couldn't have been. Shame. Whilst the reforms are to be welcomed, they still did not go far enough, particularly as regards the IPCC. There are also still some important questions to be answered.

In a far reaching statement, the Home Secretary announced a raft of significant reforms aimed at making the police "more transparent in their business":

• A national registers of chief officers’ pay and perks packages, gifts and hospitality, outside interests, including second jobs, and their contact with the media will be published on-line.
• The College of Policing will publish a new code of ethics, which will be distributed to officers of all ranks. In addition, the College of Policing will work with chief officers to create a single set of professional standards on which officers will be trained and tested throughout their careers. 

• A new national register of officers struck off from the police will be maintained to prevent disgraced officers being employed by other forces.
• The college will establish a stronger and more consistent system of vetting for police officers, which chief constables and police and crime commissioners will have to consider when making decisions about recruitment and promotions. Every candidate for chief officer ranks will need to be successfully vetted before being accepted by the police national assessment centre.
   

Importantly, so far as the IPCC are concerned:

• The fact that an officer has resigned to avoid disciplinary proceedings will be taken into account by disciplinary panels in reaching their conclusions. Indeed,  where misconduct is proven, these officers will also be struck off by the College of Policing. 

So far as its powers and resources are concerned:

• The IPCC will be given the power to investigate private sector companies working for the police.
• The budgets of police professional standards departments will be transferred to the IPCC.

It also appears that the IPCC will be given permanent powers to compel officers to attend interviews and give evidence to its investigations, which the Secretary of State noted had been agreed for "exceptional" investigations such as Hillsborough:

"I have already said that we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to give the IPCC the....powers that the IPCC has asked for to improve its effectiveness and increase public confidence. I am prepared to consider any further legislative changes that the commission says it needs."

The main driver for this announcement appears to be the recommendations on policing made by the Leveson Inquiry, all of which have been accepted by the Government, rather than the Home Affairs Committee's report on the IPCC. That does not detract from their significance. A lack of transparency in the police force is one of the main reasons that public confidence is so low, the changes to be effected through the College of Policing should go a significant way to remedying that. Although, the details of what will require a declaration on the register of interests, for example, what level of scrutiny it will enjoy and how receptive the Force will be to these prosals, all remain to be seen.

The changes to the IPCC go right to the heart of many of the structural problems of the organisation. The Home Affairs Committee was unrelenting in its criticism of the lack of financial resources enjoyed by the  Commission, dwarfed by individual Professional Standards Departments. It was also "hamstrung" but its inability to compel the attendance of officers at its investigations or to prevent them from retiring to avoid scrutiny. It also noted that not only was its remit expanding but so were the number of private contractors doing the work formerly done by public bodies, thereby falling beyond the authority of the IPCC. The traumatic death of Jimmy Mbenga whilst being restrained on an extradition flight by G4S, provides just one case in point.

The increase in the IPCC's budget is particularly interesting. Whilst is undoubtedly needed, if that money is coming from resources previously enjoyed by individual police standards departments and they are recognised as the, albeit ineffective, "frontline" in police complaints, what happens to them now? Are they being abolished? Will they be down-sized? Again, it is not clear. A broadly speaking, two-tier complaints process is not in itself a problem, provided that PSDs are sufficient independent. Indeed, if they did their jobs better, the IPCC would be able to focus their efforts on the most serious complaints. If the PSDs are to go, then I doubt whether there is going to be any significant practical beneft to the IPCC, unless of course, the staff are being transferred with the budget as well.

As has been said, almost ad neausium, the problems of the IPCC run deeper than money. Increased powers and the prospect of further reforms, should the Commission ask for them, give it some real teeth but that bite will be blunted unless those powers are embraced and the disproportionate influence of serving and former officers is properly addressed. Dame Ann Owens, chair of the IPCC said of these new powers, when they were granted ahead of the reinvestigation of the Hillsborough Disaster:

"[They]will allow us to show what we can do and how we can do it. We want that to be a model of how we go forward."
 

She may have got her wish but there is still work to be done.This announcement must not negate the other issues raised by the Home Affairs Committee. The Home Secretary may have thrown the IPCC a lifeline but it remains firmly on the brink.