Minister Chris Philp thanked Jones for her remarks and stated that the Government has acted upon previous issues by commissioning this report, which aims to address ongoing problems. He highlighted additional funding provided since 2019 and reiterated the importance of national vetting standards set in 2017. The minister emphasised that misconduct procedures are governed by statute and expects recommendations for improvement to be fully implemented.

Chris Philp thanked Bottomley for his question and acknowledged the importance of learning from past issues to restore public trust. He offered to look further into the specific case mentioned if provided with more details and expressed willingness to meet regarding it.

Acknowledges the seriousness of the issue and highlights that 35% of officers are now female with an even higher proportion among recent recruits. The training standards in the Policing Education Qualifications Framework include bias and discrimination training.

Describes the actions as completely unacceptable and expects urgent action to be taken based on the 43 recommendations.

Does not comment on the specific case but notes that public opinion passes judgment when people run for election.

Agrees with his support of hard-working, brave police officers while ensuring that issues highlighted in the report are addressed urgently.

Acknowledges the need for immediate action on misconduct allegations and performance issues while supporting regular re-vetting of police officers.

Reiterates the need to support police officers while addressing urgent improvements based on the report's findings.

Notes that there is a process of periodic re-vetting of serving police officers, with recommendations for more frequent checks.

Agrees that most police are hard-working and decent, ensuring appropriate action is taken while supporting those doing good work.

Acknowledges the importance of setting clear standards, supporting police chiefs, and ensuring that institutions set appropriate guidelines.

Notes the shocking case and highlights that recommendations address vetting issues, including rechecking existing cadre of officers.

Of the extra 20,000 officers, just over 15,000 were in post by 30 September this year. The information I have been provided with in the last week—my first week in this post—is that by the end of March 2023, in four or five months’ time, all 20,000 will have been recruited as planned.

The report made it clear that there have been problems with vetting—that is one of its key and troubling findings. There is a programme of automatic re-vetting of officers on a periodic basis, and one of the report’s recommendations is that that should be done more frequently, for the reasons the hon. Gentleman sets out. More broadly, officer numbers did go down shortly after 2010, owing to the catastrophic economic circumstances at the time, but they are now going up rapidly and by March of next year, as I said a second ago, we will have a record number of police officers—at no point in this country’s history have we had more officers on the books than we will have by March next year. In fact, my understanding is that in the force area covering his constituency and mine there are already a record number of Metropolitan police officers. Never in the Met’s history have there been more police officers on its books than there are today.

I thank the hon. Member for his question, and I agree with his comments at the beginning. We should keep in mind in this debate, both in the House and publicly, that the vast majority of police officers are decent, hard-working and brave people putting their own safety at risk to keep us safe; we should never lose sight of that fact. I share his concern about the vetting issues that we have discussed, and there are recommendations to improve those. Where applicants have served a custodial sentence or signed the sex offenders register, there is currently an absolute prohibition on them being recruited as police officers, and where they have a criminal conviction of any kind, there is a presumption against their recruitment. That is a rebuttable presumption, so they can make representations, but the presumption is that they will not be hired. Clearly, we need to ensure that that information is always known and always considered, and there are recommendations in yesterday’s report to ensure that that happens.