Minutes

Minutes of a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority held on 23 May 2002, at Romney House, Marsham Street, London, SW1.

Present

Members

• Toby Harris (Chair)
• Anthony Arbour
• Reshard Auladin
• Richard Barnes (Deputy Chair)
• John Biggs
• Cindy Butts
• Lynne Featherstone
• Nicky Gavron
• Peter Herbert (Deputy Chair)
• Elizabeth Howlett
• Darren Johnson
• Nicholas Long
• Eric Ollerenshaw
• Sir John Quinton
• Richard Sumray
• Graham Tope
• Abdal Ullah
• Rachel Whittaker
• Cecile Wright

Richard Barnes took the Chair for the first part of the meeting due to Toby Harris' late arrival

MPA officers

• Catherine Crawford (Clerk)
• Peter Martin (Treasurer)
• Simon Vile (Head of Secretariat)

MPS officers

• Sir John Stevens (Commissioner)
• Ian Blair (Deputy Commissioner)
• Keith Luck (Director of Resources)
• Michael Todd (Assistant Commissioner)
• Steve House (Deputy Assistant Commissioner)
• Bernard Hogan-Howe (Assistant Commissioner)
• Robert Quick (Commander)

Approximately 50 members of the press/public and other MPA/MPS staff were also present.

Part 1

156. Apologies for absence

(Agenda item 1)

Apologies for absence were received from Jenny Jones and R. David Muir and from Toby Harris for late arrival.

157. Minutes

(Agenda item 2)

The Authority considered the minutes of its meeting held on 25 April 2002. With regard to item 151 of the minutes (Community Support Officers) it was clarified that there would be a range of career options open to CSOs in the MPS, one of which would be to become a police officer.

Resolved - that the minutes of the Authority meeting held on 25 April 2002 be confirmed and signed as a correct record.

158. Question to the Authority

(Agenda item 3)

In accordance with Standing Order 15, Kathryn Bonds asked the following question:

"As a member of a Hospital Trust Board with one of the busiest Accident and Emergency Departments in London, I would like to ask the MPA whether there has been any research, investigations and discussions into developing and prioritising a London-wide policy and strategy to address the increasing violence that occurs i.e. to hospital staff and to other attendees at Accident and Emergency Departments. On a general note, the A&E departments are now seen as some sort of 'battleground' where no-one wishes to go, when they should be seen as a place of safety."

The Clerk responded on behalf of the Authority as follows:

"I would like to thank Kathryn Bonds for raising an issue which highlights a theme of great relevance to both the MPA and the MPS, namely the need for partnership working.

I am not aware of any current research, either nationally or in London, on this issue although I am aware that the Police Foundation, recognising the extent and severity of the problem, have been considering the case for some joint working with the NHS.

The Metropolitan Police has not carried out any specific research on the scale of the problem, nor does it have a specific corporate policy on how individual borough commands should respond to local Health Trusts. However, borough commanders are encouraged, through the local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, to discuss with hospitals an appropriate level of police support. This has resulted in a number of successful partnerships across the capital where, in some instances, the local health trust has provided on-site accommodation for use by police officers, who can then directly support hospital staff.

It is only through such partnership working at a local level that the best response to particular circumstances can be achieved. However, having accompanied the Authority's Chair on many of his visits to London Boroughs over the past nine months or so, I am aware that a recurring theme in quite a few boroughs has been a perceived lack of engagement by health authorities and trusts in crime and disorder reduction partnerships. This will, we hope, be an historical observation as the new primary care trusts, more exactly co-terminous with the boroughs, recognise the importance of partnership working.

Ms Bonds may be aware that the MPA has a scheme whereby each of its members is linked to one or more London boroughs. The intention is that they can keep in touch with the borough police and local partnership organisations, can feed in issues and ensure that specific borough concerns are raised in a suitable MPA forum.

I would like to suggest to all MPA members that they may wish to take up this issue in their boroughs to find out what the position is locally."

The Chair commented that every member of the Authority shared the concerns expressed by Ms Bonds. Elizabeth Howlett commented that she had been appointed as the Chair of the GLA's Health Committee and would be willing to have this issue placed on the committee's agenda for further consideration.

159. Petition

(Agenda item 4)

A petition bearing the names of over 4,000 signatories was presented to the Authority by representatives of the South Brent Crime Prevention Panel. The petition was in the following terms:

"We the undersigned, being residents of and/or working in the London Borough of Brent, do petition the Metropolitan Police Authority to make urgent arrangements to substantially increase the establishment strength of police officers in this borough to enable them to provide the service to which we are entitled."

Introducing the petition, Mr Peddie, the Secretary, referred to the loss of officers under the Resource Allocation Formula and that since April 2001 60% of officers posted to the borough had been probationers. Resignations had further impacted on the number of experienced officers. He also referred to the demands being placed on individual officers because of under-resourcing and the desire of the community to see more officers on the street to reduce the fear of crime and to deal with those issues that concern the community such as anti-social behaviour, graffiti and drunkenness. Mr Chandu Badiani, the Panel's Chairman, and two other members of the Panel then presented the petition to the Chair.

The Chair thanked the Panel representatives and said that the Clerk would respond by letter to them.

At this point Toby Harris took the Chair.

160. Minutes of committees

(Agenda item 5)

The Authority received the approved or draft minutes of the following committees:

• Human Resources, 21 May
• Co-ordination and Urgency, 7 May
• Consultation, Diversity and Outreach, 9 May

161. Chair's, Members' and Clerk's updates

(Agenda item 6)

An update of the activities undertaken by the Chair and Rachel Whittaker was tabled.

Richard Sumray reported on the progress so far in recruiting a new Independent Member – the Selection Panel, of which he was a member, had completed its task and a shortlist of four candidates had been submitted to the Home Secretary for his consideration. Darren Johnson commented that he was prepared to continue as Lewisham link member on his own, if the new Independent Member did not wish to take on the same link responsibilities as had Angela Slaven.

Elizabeth Howlett referred to an interesting meeting she and Richard Barnes had had with the Vice Squad.

The Clerk reported that she and Cecile Wright had attended the first conference arranged by the Standards Board for England. She had raised security concerns about members' home addresses being made publicly available and had received an assurance that, as Monitoring Officer, she could exercise her discretion not to do this. She also took the opportunity to remind members of the need to return their declarations of interests for inclusion on the register that day. Cecile Wright said that the Standards Board for England would be interested in hearing from anyone who was interested in helping plan the next conference.

162 Commissioner's update

(Agenda item 7)

The Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, gave the Authority an update on the following developments and current issues:

Mayday

He reported that the Mayday demonstrations had been largely peaceful apart from outbreaks of disorder in Soho during the evening. The MPS had committed 1,000 fewer officers to the policing operation than the previous year. 54 arrests had been made, largely for public order offences and more were expected once CCTV footage had been examined. The estimated cost of the operation was £2.4m (£1.4m opportunity costs and £1m additional costs).

Nicholas Long commended the number of motorcycle officers who had voluntarily displayed their names on their uniforms and hoped that this voluntary scheme would be extended in time to all officers and the new police community support officers.

Millwall v Birmingham disorder, 2 May 2002

The Commissioner reported on the serious disturbances that had occurred outside the ground following this football match. 127 officers and three horses had been injured. 18 arrests had been made and more were anticipated. The Director of Public Prosecutions had authorised riot charges.

The Deputy Commissioner had met the Chairman of the football club and had been offered an apology and assistance in identifying offenders. However, no agreement had been reached on compensation for the costs incurred by the MPS, such as the cost of policing outside the ground, the loss of equipment and the cost of officers being off duty as a result of injuries, together with the cost of the inquiry into the disturbances.

Members discussed various issues such as whether clubs should be charged for the whole cost of policing and whether this would change their perception of their responsibilities; the extent to which the police and other agencies can help support the communities affected by these events; and the use of CCTV outside grounds.

The Chair reported that he and the Commissioner were shortly to meet the London premier league clubs to discuss policing issues. He was of the view that a mechanism linked to the licensing process might be the fairest way of recovering policing costs. Similar considerations would also apply to the costs of policing outside large nightclubs or pubs.

It was

Resolved –

That a future meeting of the new Co-ordination and Policing Committee consider the issues around recovery of costs etc for policing outside football grounds.

Police Community Support Officers

The Commissioner reported that the recruitment drive for 500 security CSOs for central London was to be launched later that day.

Trident Update

The Commissioner reported that there were encouraging signs that the incidence of gun-related crimes was slowing down.

He also referred to recent operations at Heathrow Airport relating to two flights from Jamaica which had been targeted at random. These operations had resulted in a number of arrests both here and in Jamaica and the recovery of quantities of drugs. Cecile Wright welcomed the working relationships with the Jamaican authorities. She suggested that when the Commissioner next visited Jamaica efforts should be made to involve representatives of the Columbian Government.

Peter Herbert commented that there was widespread recognition that drugs policy had failed and was in need of wholesale review – demand for drugs rather than supply was always the key driver so it was demand that needed to be addressed.

Police officers and gun crime

The Commissioner gave brief details of several incidents that had occurred over the past three weeks in which police officers had encountered guns. In one incident an officer was shot in the leg. There had also been convictions recently in two separate cases where unarmed officers had tackled armed criminals.

Other issues

In response to a question from Darren Johnson, the Commissioner reported that there had been no problems with far right activity during the recent London borough elections.

Eric Ollerenshaw referred to the Home Secretary's intention to publish crime statistics on a quarterly basis. The Chair replied that there had not been much progress so far in drafting a protocol to cover this. In any event, the MPS publish statistics monthly and the Authority would want to reserve the right to consider performance statistics more frequently than quarterly.

Peter Herbert referred to a review being carried out by the Attorney General of the role and practices of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in relation to deaths in custody. He suggested that it would be useful for the MPS to feed into this review. He also referred to a thematic review of the CPS by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in relation to race hate crime. Whilst the MPS detection of race hate crime had risen, the CPS dropped the 'racially aggravated' part of the charges in some 18% of cases.

163. New MPA committee structure

(Agenda item 8)

The Authority considered a report by the Clerk proposing a new committee structure.

Some members had concerns that the new structure increased the number of committees and meetings with consequential additional cost and demands on members of officers. The Chair commented that the proposals split the functions of committees which currently had large and unwieldy agendas. He would expect agendas and meetings to be more focussed and the need for numbers of MPS officers to attend these meetings to be reduced. He accepted that there would be a need to keep the new structure under review.

The Clerk commented that it had not been possible to design a new structure which reduced costs as the responsibilities of the Authority had been underestimated when it was set up and consequently it had been under-resourced from the outset.

Points of detail that came out of members' discussion of the proposed structure included:

• that any co-options to committees should be approved by the full Authority
• in addition to allocating lead member roles, the Co-ordination & Policing Committee should also define what these roles are
• this committee's 'lead on community safety matters' should be better defined, particularly in terms of its relationship with the role of the Consultation Committee
• this committee should, perhaps, meet on Mondays or Fridays – lunchtime meetings may be appropriate
• success criteria should be identified for the new structure
• the Planning, performance and Review Committee will need to meet more frequently than five times a year
• that the current terms of reference of the Estates Sub-Committee should be changed to remove the Sub-Committee's delegated authority to vary capital and revenue schemes

Resolved - That

1. a new committee structure be approved as set out in paragraphs 3 and 4 and appendix 1 of the report;
2. the new structure should come into effect following the Authority's annual meeting on 27 June;
3. that the draft calendar of meetings be reworked, including holding meetings of Co-ordination & Policing Committee on Mondays or Fridays, and circulated quickly for consultation;
4. the structure be reviewed after a year and that the demands on member and officer time be regularly monitored;
5. the proposals for handling 'for information' reports in future, as contained in paragraph 10, be approved;
6. the terms of reference of the Estates Sub-Committee be amended so that variation of individual capital and revenue schemes be subject to ratification by the Finance Committee;
7. the Co-ordination & Policing Committee membership should comprise Chair and Deputy Chairs of the Authority, three other MPA members, and Chairs of the following committees: Performance, Planning & Review; Professional Standards & Complaints; Human Resources; Finance; Consultation; and Equal Opportunities and Diversity; and
8. co-options to the membership of committees should be approved by the full Authority.

164. Appointments at the MPA annual meeting

(Agenda item 9)

The Authority considered a report by the Clerk and

Resolved –

That the process for making appointments at the Authority's annual meeting be agreed as set out in the report.

165. Operation Strongbox

(Agenda item 10)

This report, providing an overview of this operation between 1999 and its conclusion in March 2002, was considered in conjunction with the following item.

166. Operation Safer Streets

(Agenda item 11)

The Authority considered a report by the Commissioner on the results of phases one and two of Operation Safer Streets.

In the discussion members commented on:

• the longer-term issues of how to sustain this activity beyond March 2003
• whether the operation was leading to displacement, such as an increase in burglaries or till snatches
• the need to co-ordinate the activities of criminal justice units with the operation
• the need, working in partnership, to target 'at risk' youths and to provide diversion schemes etc over the summer period
• the benefit of involving the lay advisory groups more positively on a borough by borough basis

Cecile Wright asked to be contacted by the senior MPS officer responsible to discuss issues of concern to the black community.

Resolved –

1. to note the reports on Operation Strongbox and Operation Safer Streets; and
2. to support attempts by the MPS to strengthen partnerships working in boroughs to target 'at risk' youths, subject to proposals being submitted to a future meeting of the Authority on how this can be achieved

167. Policing and Performance Plan 2003/04 – development of the planning process

(Agenda item 12)

The Authority considered a report by the Commissioner on the planning process and timetable for the production of the 2003/04 plan.

The officers were asked to clarify whether MPA approval of bespoke targets was to be sought in January or February 2003, as the report contained conflicting dates.

Resolved –

1. That the framework and timetable for the development of the 2003/04 Policing and Performance Plan be agreed; and
2. that bottom up planning, consultation and the link with budgetary arrangements are the key issues for development.

168. MPA Race Equality Scheme

(Agenda item 13)

The Authority considered a report by the Clerk on the MPA's draft race equality scheme, which had been produced as required by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.

In noting that the MPS was also required to produce a race equality scheme, Peter Herbert commented on the importance of maintaining progress post-Lawrence. He had concerns that there were real issues still to be addressed, such as the complete lack of any visibly ethnic minority officers in anti-terrorism and a similar situation in special branch. The Chair agreed and said that he was picking up the impression from some people that race was slipping down the agenda in the MPS and it was important to identify some tangible actions.

Referring to the MPA scheme, Cindy Butts commented on the importance of training both staff and members on their responsibilities under the Act.

Resolved – That

1. the final draft MPA race equality scheme and action plan be endorsed;
2. the Clerk be authorised to make any final amendments to the draft as a result of comments received during the consultation period;
3. the MPS race equality scheme and action plan be received;
4. the scheme be published on the MPA internet site on 31 May 2002, in order to meet the statutory publication timetable;
5. it be noted that further consultation will be carried out during the first six months following publication of the scheme, which may lead to amendments and additions; and
6. the financial implications arising from the action plan be noted and endorsement given to the proposal to include appropriate provision in the Authority's draft 2003/04 budget for submission to the Mayor.

The meeting ended at 1.00 p.m.

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