Responding to the report of The Morris Inquiry - update

Report: 08
Date: 19 May 2005
By: the Chief Executive & Clerk

Summary

This report provides an update on the work of committees and the Steering Group in taking forward the recommendations of the Morris Inquiry Report.

A. Recommendations

That the report be noted.

(Any observations from the Equal Opportunities & Diversity Board and the Human Resources Committee will be reported to the full Authority.)

B. Supporting information

1. In February the Authority agreed to adopt the Morris Inquiry Report as a framework for change in the MPS and the MPA. In doing so, it also agreed the process for taking the work forward. The 37 recommendations in the report were allocated to the relevant committees – the Equal Opportunities & Diversity Board, the Human Resources Committee and the Professional Standards & Complaints Committee; these committees are now responsible for ensuring the work is taken forward. The Morris Steering Group is responsible for taking the strategic overview to ensure that progress is being maintained and to address cross-committee / service issues.

2. So, the detailed work will be carried out via these committees. However, the Steering Group is anxious to maintain the profile and importance of this work by way of regular reports to the full Authority or the Co-ordination & Policing Committee as appropriate. This is the first such report.

3. Two other reports have been published in recent months:

• The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) investigation into the police service in England and Wales
• The Taylor Report on police conduct and discipline matters.
  There is a great deal of overlap and interrelationships between these reports and Morris. In most cases, similar conclusions and recommendations are reached. It is therefore important that a co-ordinated approach is taken to the MPS’s and the MPA’s response. However, because of the sheer number of recommendations (125 in the CRE report alone), there is a danger that the big picture of achieving real and lasting changes will be overwhelmed by an attempt to act on all the recommendations.

Strategic themes

4. What the MPS and MPA officers have proposed, therefore, and the Steering Group supports, is an approach that groups the recommendations of all the reports in eight strategic themes, each with a stated outcome and a strategic owner at a senior level. The Steering Group was the first point of consultation and these proposals are due to be considered by the MPS Management Board in early June.

Consultation and communication

Strategic owner: Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson

Strategic outcome: To ensure that all staff are involved where appropriate in the decision-making processes and that the outcomes are clearly communicated within the MPS.

Support for staff

Strategic owner: Martin Tiplady, Director of Human Resources

Strategic outcome: To provide support through packages that are designed to cater for the changing needs of staff across a wide range of issues

Recruitment and progression

Strategic owner: Martin Tiplady, Director of Human Resources

Strategic outcome: To ensure that open and transparent recruitment and retention processes exists for all staff and that they are able to develop to their full potential within the MPS.

Diversity

Strategic owner: Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson

Strategic outcome: To ensure that all staff, in their actions and behaviour, promote respect and value all aspects of diversity.

Training and development

Strategic owner: Martin Tiplady

Strategic outcome: To ensure that all staff and managers are appropriately developed to enable them to carry out their role to a competent standard with confidence.

Professional standards

Strategic owner: Assistant Commissioner Alan Brown

Strategic outcome: To ensure that DPS conducts its business in a manner that secures the confidence of the organisation and the public with the use of appropriate investigative practices and robust management

Building capability

Strategic owner: Assistant Commissioner Alan Brown

Strategic outcome: To improve service delivery by reducing duplication and bureaucracy, enhance capability through devolving to the front line, and utilising resources in a sharper and smarter way.

MPA issues

Strategic owner: David Riddle, Deputy Chief Executive

Strategic outcome: To ensure that the MPA discharges its responsibilities in a number of areas, including police complaints and discipline and the general duty under the Race Relations Amendment Act.

5. In addition, the Steering Group will need to agree an approach to addressing those recommendations with national implications, but on which the MPA will have a view and would want to see progressed.

6. The Steering Group will be arranging for the strategic owners to attend its next three meetings to hear from them their vision, strategy, timeframe and resources for taking forward their strategic theme.

7. The Steering Group has not finally settled the detail of how in practice it will maintain a strategic overview and monitor progress. However, it is proposed that a main part of its approach will be to select one key recommendation for each theme, which could be seen as a ‘portal’ through which improvements in other areas of MPS work would occur. Focussing on these recommendations will provide a strategic steer to the delivery of these outcomes and will complement the work being carried out by the MPA committees.

External involvement and Independent Advisory Groups (IAGs)

8. The Steering Group is conscious of the need to make implementation an inclusive exercise, building in points along the way to consult with all relevant stakeholders. It has also decided that it would be helpful to have appropriate representatives of the five issue-based IAGs working alongside the Steering Group, not necessarily attending every meeting but by being involved at appropriate stages.

9. The Steering Group has also decided, in some ways as a spur to progress, to hold a Stakeholder Conference in December – one year on from the publication of the Morris Report – focussing on what has been achieved since publication.

10. The Morris Report made a number of recommendations about Independent Advisory Groups. The Steering Group is unlikely to propose acceptance of the recommendation that the MPA should appoint the members of IAGs, but the Steering Group can see merit in the view that there should be greater transparency about appointments, role and operating procedures and scope for enabling the IAGs to exchange ideas from each other and elsewhere. The Steering Group will be returning to this issue at its next meeting and is conscious that the IAGs themselves must be engaged in the process of developing best practice.

Work in Committees

11. It is probably fair to say that the committees are at the stage of developing their thinking on how to carry out their role in relation to the Morris recommendations. The Professional Standards & Complaints Committee has a work programme and both the Equal Opportunities & Diversity Board and the Human Resources Committee are actively considering how to take the work forward. Now that the MPS has a process for addressing the recommendations in a manageable way progress through the committees is expected to pick up – the Steering Group will monitor this as part of its role.

C. Race and equality impact

Race and equality issues are fundamental to the Morris Report. They must, therefore, also be integral to the way that the MPA and the MPS address its recommendations. As part of this, there must be provision in the programme to consult with and involve stakeholder organisations at relevant stages.

D. Financial implications

No specific implications arising from this report.

E. Background papers

• The Morris Inquiry Report

F. Contact details

Report author: Simon Vile, MPA.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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