Operation Midland Independent Report

Before I call the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) to ask his urgent question, I must inform the House that I have been advised that Carl Beech has appealed his conviction and sentence. Colleagues, those appeal proceedings are therefore sub judice under the terms of this House’s resolution and no reference should be made to the merits or otherwise either of that appeal or of the sentence imposed by the court.

(Urgent Question): May I add my commendation to the Trade Minister who responded to the previous urgent question, who did so as to the manner born?

To ask the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service if he will make a statement on the Home Office’s response to Sir Richard Henriques’s independent report on the Metropolitan police’s Operation Midland.

This is a deeply concerning case. Operation Midland was the Metropolitan Police Service’s investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse made by Carl Beech against a range of public figures. Beech is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for perverting the course of justice. He has appealed his conviction and sentence, as you mentioned, Mr Speaker, and they are a matter for the courts to consider. This case has had a devastating impact on those he accused and their families. Sir Richard Henriques’s report on how the Met handled the investigation raises many concerns. The Met has already apologised for failings in the investigation and acted on many of Sir Richard’s recommendations, and we very much welcome the publication by the Met on Friday of the fuller detail of what Sir Richard found. I note that the commissioner of the metropolis has issued a further statement and apology today.

It is now vital that the public receive independent assurance that the Met has learned from the lessons identified in Sir Richard’s report and has made the necessary improvements. That is crucial to restoring public confidence that police handling of an investigation of such sensitive matters is both fair and impartial. That is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary wrote last week to Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary and fire and rescue services to ask him to undertake an inspection at the earliest opportunity to follow up on Sir Richard’s review. It must be right that a body independent of Government take this work forward. She also asked that the inspection take account of the findings of the report of the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which was published this morning, and which we will be considering carefully.

The public must have faith in the impartiality of their police service, and no one should have to suffer the ignominy of public false accusations of the most heinous kind. The Government are determined to ensure that the lessons are learned by the police and that the failings of this investigation are never repeated.

The fundamental principle of our justice system is innocent until proven guilty—a principle undermined over the past decade when the rules of police forces were amended, particularly after the Jimmy Savile scandal. The entirely understandable aim of those changes was to increase the conviction rate for sexual offences, but that has been a complete failure, with conviction rates for sex crimes having dropped dramatically in the last five years.

The price that has been paid in terms of reputational damage and ruined lives has been enormous. High-profile figures investigated under Operation Midland have had their reputations disgracefully and unjustly tarnished. The IOPC, whose report was published this morning, has failed miserably to identify the Met’s failures, identify the culpable people or resolve the issues.

However, it is not just the Met. Other police forces across the country follow policy guidelines, automatically believing all allegations brought by complainants, and therefore disbelieving the defendants. This has damaged the reputations of Cliff Richard, Paul Gambaccini, Jim Davidson, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and many other, less well-known defendants. Will HMIC therefore review not just Operation Midland, but the judicial and policing rules and procedures covering all such cases, so that we get justice for victims and protection for the innocent?

My right hon. Friend raises issues that are, of course, important. He rightly points out the devastating impact, as I mentioned earlier, that this episode has had on many significant public figures, one of whom was a much decorated war hero. I hope he will recognise that, in many circumstances, the police face a difficult task in trying to balance the need to give victims of crime the confidence to come forward, engage with them and report crimes, against the requirement to have justice or impartiality in an investigation at the same time.

The College of Policing, which looked at the guidelines, considered, for example, the tendency or policy that had been adopted for victims always to be believed. We have clarified the guidance that is available to police officers in those circumstances, such that, while a victim’s allegations must be heard with integrity and properly recorded once an investigation has begun, that must be done with impartiality. We hope and believe that the audit or inspection by Her Majesty’s inspector will look specifically at whether the Met has learned the lessons of this particular episode.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this important urgent question.

Sir Richard Henriques’s report makes for extremely sobering reading. At the heart of this case are the victims and their families, who have faced years of questions and unthinkable damage on the basis of false and malicious allegations. It is clear that this case has exposed a serious failure of the police’s investigative functions and decision making, which has had profound consequences. Officers failed to present the whole picture when seeking search warrants, and the investigation into Lord Brittan went on far too long. Of that there is no question.

The question for the IOPC is whether the five officers involved acted deliberately or criminally. Its conclusion is that they made mistakes and that the processes failed, but that they were not guilty of gross misconduct. Indeed, Sir Richard himself acknowledged that, notwithstanding the many mistakes made, the officers conducted the investigation

“in a conscientious manner with propriety and with honesty.”

The question, therefore, for the police, for the Home Office and for us, as Parliament, is what needs to change organisationally and culturally to ensure that investigations are properly, objectively and successfully pursued. That institutional change must be our objective, but it is so often lost in the heat of the tabloids’ gaze.

It is right that our police are subject to the most intense scrutiny. The accountability of the police is a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy, and many of Sir Richard’s recommendations must be implemented in the interests of accountability. Will the Minister therefore confirm exactly how many of his 25 recommendations have already been delivered and what the timeline is for further recommendations from both Sir Richard and the IOPC to be implemented and for HMIC’s review?

I thank the hon. Lady for a sensible intervention and for her questions. She is quite right that, as she concluded, we face the challenge of striking the difficult balance of ensuring that victims have confidence that they can come forward, that they will be taken seriously and that their allegations will be considered, but also of ensuring that those who are alleged to have carried out crimes know that the investigation will be conducted with impartiality and balance and that, in the end, justice will be served. That is absolutely the balance that we are seeking to achieve through the guidance, which was updated recently with the College of Policing to make that clearer. Part of the inspection that we have commissioned from HMIC into the Met police will be to make sure that some of these lessons have been learned.

The hon. Lady asked specifically about the number of recommendations in the Henriques report that have already been enacted, and part of our commission with the inspector is to find out exactly that—where we have got to in terms of progress. I will certainly look at the point she raises on audio recording and consider what more action we can take on that.

The hon. Lady will understand that both the report itself, which we have seen recently in full, and the IOPC report, which was issued this morning, are large documents and contain significant implications for policing into the future. That is something that we want to consider and that the Home Secretary wants to consider as well. As to the investigation into leaks, that would obviously be a matter for the Metropolitan police, should they wish to pursue it,

I agree completely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis): the shining jewel of our criminal justice system is that somebody is innocent until proven guilty. That is their protection against the might of Government and, of course, the might of the media when they reach a speedy judgment. It has always been a concern that the processes we are discussing have casually turned that aside and that, as far as the public have been concerned, people have been guilty until proven innocent. I hope my hon. Friend will address that. Sir Richard makes that very clear.

The other vital point, which no one has raised yet, relates to interventions by public figures trying to get the police to pursue matters further. I refer in this particular case to the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson)—

Order. I presume that the right hon. Gentleman has informed the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson) that he intends to raise this matter in the House.

I am not making any further reference to him other than that he was raised in the report—

I advise the right hon. Gentleman that it is important that a Member is given notice if they are going to be referred to, so I am sure he will bear that in mind in his closing comments.

I will. I was simply referencing Sir Richard’s report. My point is a general one. Will the Minister address the reality of the police finding themselves unnecessarily influenced by public figures as to the direction of their investigations? There needs to be some method by which they can resist that.

My right hon. Friend raises some important issues, not least the much-debated challenge of pre-charge anonymity. The guidance is clear that those against whom allegations have been made pre-charge should generally be kept anonymous until they are charged. However, I am sure that he will accept that it is appropriate in certain circumstances for the police to release the name of somebody who is suspected of a crime, not least, for example, if they are conducting a manhunt looking for a suspect in a murder.

My right hon. Friend also raises the influence or otherwise of us and other public figures on police investigations. In his long years as a constituency MP, he will no doubt have had cause to write to the police on numerous occasions with regard to investigations into his constituents or on the behalf of his constituents, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for him to do. However, we all have a duty to bear in mind the protections and privileges that are afforded to us in this place and to use them as wisely and judiciously as possible

False allegations of sexual assault and abuse may be rare, but they do happen. They harm not only the wrongfully accused, but those who have been the victims of sexual assault and abuse by making it less likely that they will be believed, and I say that based on my experience of three years as a sex crimes prosecutor in Scotland’s national sex crimes unit. Does the Minister agree that the police owe it both to the victims of sexual crime and to the principle of innocent until proven guilty to carry out their investigations professionally and thoroughly without fear or favour? What steps will he be taking to reassure the victims of sexual crime that the mess that the Met has made of this case will not jeopardise future cases? Finally, there can be few things more serious than misleading a court, which is particularly serious when it is done by a police officer, so what repercussions will there be for the officers who unlawfully obtained warrants by misleading the court?

The hon. and learned Lady raises an important point about the continuing confidence of victims to come forward. As she quite rightly says, false allegations not only betray those against whom the allegations are made, but those who come afterwards with similar allegations, who will naturally feel, in the wake of a large and difficult situation like this, that they are less likely to be believed. That is absolutely not the case, and we will do our best as a Government to continue the increase in public confidence, which has seen a significant rise in the number of historical allegations of child sexual abuse, into which an inquiry is under way already. People should have no fear that they will not be taken seriously.

The Home Secretary has commissioned an inspection of the Met police to ensure that it is learning lessons and embedding exactly the measures to which the hon. and learned Lady aspires. Once that concludes, the inspector will no doubt make a report available to the House, and I would be more than happy to come and update the House in the future.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I cannot say that on many occasions, but I agreed with every point that she made on this occasion. Following on from one of her points, the Sir Richard Henriques report is very critical of the then Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse. The public will be surprised to learn that he is now the director general of operations in the National Crime Agency—an organisation for which the Minister has direct ministerial accountability. Does he have full confidence in Mr Rodhouse in that position? If so, will he tell the House why?

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will understand that it is extremely important for credibility and trust in policing in this country not only that the police service is operationally independent, but that the organisations charged with its discipline and governance and for investigating complaints exactly such as this are also deemed to be independent. He will know that the IOPC, which is charged with that duty, has found no reason to conduct any action against that particular police officer. It would be inappropriate for me, as a Minister of the Crown, to intervene to countermand or to criticise that investigation in any way. However, both the Home Secretary and I will be carefully considering both the Henriques report and the IOPC report that came out this morning and what our next steps should be.

If I went to the police to report that my car had been stolen, I would expect to be believed until the investigation or the evidence proved otherwise, but the situation is not the same if I were to report child abuse. I am concerned that commentators on the Beech case are using it as a way to discredit victims and survivors of child abuse and sexual assault. Will the Minister please confirm that if people do have the courage to come forward and report such crimes, they will be taken seriously, they will be supported, and the cases will be properly investigated?