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Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence
09 November 2023
Lead MP
Chris Philp
Debate Type
Ministerial Statement
Tags
Crime & Law EnforcementTaxationForeign Affairs
Other Contributors: 15
At a Glance
Chris Philp raised concerns about metropolitan police: operational independence in the House of Commons. A government minister responded. Other MPs also contributed.
How the Debate Unfolded
MPs spoke in turn to share their views and ask questions. Here's what each person said:
Government Statement
Hamas's recent attack in Israel, which resulted in the murder of 1,400 innocent people and the hostage-taking of about 200 individuals, has led to significant protests in the UK. Over 200 arrests have been made due to disorderly conduct, racially aggravated crimes, and assaults on police officers. The Metropolitan Police asked protesters to postpone their planned demonstration this weekend but were refused. The Prime Minister met with the Commissioner yesterday to ensure that remembrance events would be protected from disruption. While no formal ban has been requested yet, the Home Secretary will consider any such application carefully. The minister emphasised the importance of protecting communities during these tense times and reiterated confidence in the police's ability to maintain order and prevent hate speech under existing laws and powers.
Yvette Cooper
Lab
Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley
Question
Where is the Home Secretary? She has sent the Policing Minister here to refuse to repeat her words. We have seen her words this morning; she has been attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police, attacking their impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways, deliberately undermining respect for the police at a sensitive time, when they have an important job to do, and deliberately seeking to create division around remembrance, which the Policing Minister rightly said should be a time for communities to come together and to pay our respects. She is deliberately inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous of ways. She is encouraging extremists on all sides, attacking the police when she should be backing them. It is highly irresponsible and dangerous, and no other Home Secretary would ever have done this.
Minister reply
The Policing Minister confirmed that the Home Secretary was with a family member undergoing hospital treatment. He emphasised the spike in Islamophobic and antisemitic offences and expressed concern for members of the Jewish community feeling scared about the weekend's events. The Government supports operational independence but also holds the Commissioner to account, as is proper for politicians and police commissioners to do.
Michael Ellis
Con
New Forest East
Question
Of course there is a principle of operational police independence, but I am concerned that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner keeps saying he has no powers to stop the march or arrest people in these marches. He certainly has powers under sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 and under sections 1, 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the commissioner’s predecessors certainly felt that they had the power to ban marches by the English Defence League in 2011 and 2012 under the same legislation that we are talking about now? Does he also agree that the Home Secretary has a power under section 40 of the Police Act 1996?
Minister reply
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. His knowledge of the law in this area, as in all areas, is immaculate. The commissioner does have powers under—I think—section I3 of the Public Order Act 1986 to ban marches in certain circumstances. As my right hon. and learned Friend says, it was last used about 11 years ago, so it is quite a rarely used power. It applies when the police think that they are unable to deal with disorder that may break out. That is quite a high threshold. The Metropolitan police have so far not made a request to the Home Secretary under that section, but, if they do so, it will be considered very carefully indeed.
Chris Stephens
SNP
Glasgow South West
Question
Let me make it clear that the evils of antisemitism and Islamophobia should be condemned wherever we find them. More than 2.5 million Muslims fought for the British Empire in world war two to assert freedom, liberty and an end to fascism in Europe, using war to end all wars and promote peace through armistice. The protest for peace is far from the Cenotaph and starts later that day. Does the Minister agree with him? Does he empathise with the contributions of Muslims for peace, then and now?
Minister reply
As I have said very clearly, I do not agree with the suggestion that operational independence is in any way compromised. The Prime Minister made that clear following his meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner yesterday.
Theresa Villiers
Con
Chipping Barnet
Question
I know that the police are in a really difficult position, and that their powers to ban marches are constrained by law, but I have to say that I am deeply troubled by this march on Saturday. In all the many years that I have known the Jewish community, and in representing them in Chipping Barnet for 18 years, I have never known such fear and anxiety as I have seen over the past few weeks. Does the Minister agree that it is absolutely right that Members of this House and Ministers hold the police to account to insist that they deploy the full force of the law against any offences of hate crime and antisemitism at these protests?
Minister reply
My right hon. Friend is a tireless campaigner for the Jewish community in Barnet and beyond. We of course expect the police to protect the Jewish community across London and across the whole country at a time when they feel deeply uneasy.
Diana R. Johnson
Lab
Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham
Question
The Home Affairs Committee has spent many months scrutinising policing for a report that is due to be published tomorrow. That scrutiny has included the principles of policing by consent and the operational independence of the police, free from political interference, in upholding the rule of law, as set down by Parliament on protests and other matters. Alongside that, the Committee has been briefed on the policing of protests and will be looking to do more shortly. However, given the comments from the Home Secretary, can the Minister confirm that if there is to be any discussion of these long-standing policy principles of policing, Parliament is the place to do it?
Minister reply
I thank the right hon. Lady for the work of her Committee. I look forward to reading her report greatly. Scrutiny of action by the police, or indeed any other public body, is not the same as interference.
Orkney and Shetland
Question
On this Home Secretary’s watch, every day 6,000 crimes across England and Wales go unsolved, so does she trust the police to do their job or not? If the purpose of her article was to say that she knows better than the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, she should say so—and she should say so here in this Chamber. If not, what possible motive could she have for seeking to undermine public confidence in the police in this way?
Minister reply
We do have confidence in the police, but it is perfectly reasonable to scrutinise the police and hold them to account for their actions, as police and crime commissioners do every day, and as Members of this House do every day as well.
Lilian Greenwood
Lab
Nottingham South
Question
This morning, a former chief constable of Durham warned that the storm being whipped up by the Home Secretary is diverting resources away from a very serious threat that might arise. Does the Minister not understand that the Home Secretary’s incendiary and inflammatory comments ahead of what will be a really complex and sensitive policing operation for the Met this weekend is making their job even harder? Is this not a deeply irresponsible way for a Home Secretary to behave?
Minister reply
I do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation. The Home Secretary and other politicians on both sides of the House are perfectly entitled to hold policing to account, but of course this Government, as the Prime Minister said, accept—indeed, embrace—the principle of operational independence.
Jon Trickett
Lab
Normanton and Hemsworth
Question
We all know that many people will be on the march on Saturday. The organisers and participants have told me that they will be participating in ceremonies of remembrance and that their march has been organised in such a way that it will not impact on that. The truth is that the Government are attempting to draw the police into taking political sides in a very contentious matter in the country. There are millions of people who want a ceasefire. We are on a dangerous slippery slope, because the operational independence of the police to protect the right of assembly—the basic English right of liberty—is being challenged by the Home Secretary. She is not fit to hold that post, is she?
Minister reply
I do not accept that characterisation. I am sure all of us—[Interruption.] Excuse me, Mr Speaker; I have a bit of a cold this morning. We all accept the right to protest, which, as the hon. Gentleman says, long predates the European convention on human rights.
Chris Bryant
Lab
Rhondda and Ogmore
Question
The fact that only two Conservative MPs have turned up to defend the Home Secretary shows that she has already lost the support of the House. The Minister is right that there is no place for hate on our streets, but is not the truth of the matter that there is no place for hate in the Home Office either, and the problem with the present Home Secretary is that she is the person inciting hatred in this country? The Minister is right that it is perfectly fair for us to have scrutiny of the police, but that normally comes after an operational event, not before it. Is it not the case that this Home Secretary is really trying to command the police, which breaches every single understanding we have historically had of the operational independence of the police?
Minister reply
I am slightly concerned that the hon. Gentleman said that there are only two Conservative Members in the House, when it is clear there are a great deal more than that—[Interruption.] Given his—
Question
When women were treated brutally and unjustly by the Metropolitan police in this city in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder, Members came, correctly, to criticise the police, inside this House and out, for their failure and for their brutality. I remember people on the Opposition Benches calling on the Government to be more brutal on the police at that point. The hand-wringing hypocrisy and the pant-wetting that we are seeing over someone correctly criticising the police is amazing. I have witnessed Irish nationalists and republicans, who the Home Secretary referred to in her article, running too quickly to the support of Hamas, to Colombian terrorists, to Hezbollah and a whole host of others. The Home Secretary is correct to call that out and to say it as she sees it, and this House is right to back her.
Minister reply
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words. He is right to point out those examples where Members of this House, particularly on the Opposition Benches, have in the past criticised the police. No one on those occasions claimed that those criticisms impinged on the operational independence of the police; they were simply holding the police to account, as politicians on both sides are entitled to do. I am grateful to him for reminding the House of those previous occasions when Opposition Members have exercised their prerogative to hold the police to account.
Florence Eshalomi
Lab Co-op
Vauxhall and Camberwell Green
Question
I am thinking of the number of times I have spoken to criticise and call out the police for their behaviour in things that they have got wrong, but we are seeing the Home Secretary blatantly interfering with the operational day-to-day decisions of the police. We have to call that out; the police have to be independent. I have lost count of the number of people our Home Secretary has demonised, be they LGBT people, homeless people or minorities. Why? Why is there so much hate spewing from her? The organisers of the march have said that it does not coincide with Remembrance Day. Will the Minister correct that and stop conflating the two issues?
Minister reply
I do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation; it is both unfair and unintentionally inaccurate. There are all kinds of risks that the police will have to manage on Saturday if the march goes ahead, including the risk that groups break away, which did in fact happen last Saturday—a group broke away and ended up in Trafalgar Square, where they set off fireworks, and 11 police officers were assaulted. Those are the kinds of risks that will have to be managed by the police on Saturday. That is not an easy job, but I am sure that the police have the House’s full support in doing it.
Samantha Dixon
Lab
Chester North and Neston
Question
The shadow Home Secretary’s question was whether the Minister could confirm that the Home Secretary’s intervention to undermine the operational independence of the police was signed off through the normal No. 10 process and therefore has the support of the Prime Minister. The Minister said that he has no sight of that, so what will he do to furnish the House with an answer to that question?
Minister reply
I am afraid that communications between other Members of the Government are not a matter for me. I am responsible for policing, delivering record police numbers and falling crime. That is my job and I am doing it.
Jeff Smith
Lab
Manchester Withington
Question
Does the Minister agree with the Home Secretary that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters?
Minister reply
It is up to the police to apply the law. It is important that the police apply the law even-handedly, and that is what I am sure all Members of the House want them to do.
Rachel Hopkins
Lab
Luton South and South Bedfordshire
Question
Words matter, so in the Home Secretary’s absence, can the Minister explain in what way protest marches in the UK relating to Israel and Gaza are ‘disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster’, and does he agree?
Minister reply
That is not directly germane to the protests on Saturday. We have seen all kinds of protests in Ulster over the years—dissident Republicans among others. What we need to do is ensure that London’s streets are safe, and that we do not have an atmosphere of fear or intimidation, and that is what we expect the police to deliver.
Shadow Comment
Yvette Cooper
Shadow Comment
The Shadow Home Secretary criticised the current Home Secretary for undermining operational independence of the police and deliberately inflaming community tensions. She pointed out that the job of the police is to enforce laws impartially while maintaining public safety, tackling hate crime, and respecting rights for peaceful protest. Yvette Cooper questioned whether the government still supports this principle and if the Prime Minister endorses the Home Secretary's actions or should replace her.
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