Police Leadership Commission Report

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on leadership in policing.

The police perform a unique and vital role in our society. They enforce our laws, tackle those who break them, and keep the public safe. These are awesome responsibilities. The officers and staff who uphold them every day, at all levels, are owed our respect, admiration and thanks. At the same time, if forces are to serve their communities effectively, they must secure and retain the trust of those communities. But in recent years, that trust has come under strain. Creaking systems, outdated structures and a lack of central grip from previous Governments have meant that the police have struggled to consistently hit the high levels of performance that we rightly expect of them.

Things have to change. That is why earlier this year, the Home Secretary announced the most significant police reforms in 200 years. Our plans will ensure that the right policing happens in the right place, building on the progress that we have already made on restoring neighbourhood policing and driving down serious threats such as knife crime, and creating a new model in which local policing protects our communities and national policing protects us all.

The reform programme provides us with a generational opportunity to address the long-standing challenges that have hampered the police’s ability to provide a consistently world-class service to the public. One such challenge centres on the question of how we ensure that our forces have the strong, effective leadership that they need to meet the significant demands that are placed on them. It is a question that is rightly the subject of considerable parliamentary and public scrutiny, especially when things go wrong, as they have in the recent past.

Equally, I want to emphasise that there are a great many outstanding officers and staff across the police service, including those in the highest ranks. When failings occur and the public are let down, they feel it more keenly than anyone. The reality is that leadership is about more than just individuals. It is about culture and standards, and about giving every member of the police workforce the support and skills that they need to flourish and become leaders themselves.

We are not the first Government to grapple with this topic. Various tweaks have been made to the system over the years, yet the same concerns keep arising, whether they relate to culture, conduct or the retention and promotion of talent. As we roll out our reform programme, this is clearly an issue requiring close examination. That examination has now taken place in the form of an independent review commissioned by the Home Secretary last year.

The police leadership commission was established last October and is co-chaired by two former Members of this House with extensive knowledge of policing: my noble Friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs. Together with the other members of the commission, they have carried out the most significant review of police leadership in recent times. Its findings and recommendations are published today. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert for the care and skill with which they have approached their task. I am grateful, too, to the other commission members, and all who have participated. There has been a particular emphasis on giving voice to those on the frontline, which is welcome and essential.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement and pay tribute to the noble Lords Herbert and Blunkett for producing such a timely and thoughtful report.

The last year has done real damage to public confidence in police leadership. Of course, the report rightly recognises that there are many outstanding officers leading forces across the country, but the headlines that people remember tell a different story. From the shameful scenes surrounding the Maccabi Tel Aviv match to the heartbreaking murder of Henry Nowak, alongside too many other incidents, the public have been left asking a simple question: who is in charge?

Leadership is not about managing decline or issuing guidance; it is about setting a culture and making it unmistakeably clear that the first duty of every police officer is to protect the public and uphold the law without fear, without favour and without distraction. The report gets to the heart of that when it says that police leaders must refuse to take sides and remain focused entirely on preventing crime, catching criminals and bringing offenders to justice. Culture starts at the top. If we want frontline policing to change, leadership must change first.

What struck me most about the report was not simply its recommendations but the evidence behind them. This is not the work of critics looking in from the outside; it reflects what police officers themselves are saying. As the authors acknowledged in their letter to stakeholders, much of the evidence made for uncomfortable reading. Perhaps the most alarming finding is that only 13% of constables and just 17% of sergeants surveyed believed that they worked in a well-led and well-managed organisation. Think about that: more than four in five officers who put themselves in harm’s way to keep our streets safe do not believe that they work in a well-led organisation. If that does not ring alarm bells, I do not know what will.

I thank the hon. Member for welcoming the report. I agree with some of what he said. He is right that it is not the work of critics looking in from the outside. The evidence base was developed through nine months of forensic work, talking to police across all levels within the force, meaning that this is a very honest assessment of the realities in which we find ourselves.

As I said in my statement, police leadership has been a problem for some time. Inspections of police forces by His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services from 2023 to 2025 showed that not a single force had outstanding leadership. There are different leadership challenges across all our forces. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the public need to believe in the police and be confident in policing. The statistics on public confidence in policing have been worrying for some years now, and we must all look at them.

The hon. Gentleman made the usual point about officer numbers, and I will make the usual point back: as he knows, the Conservative party cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but then put 12,000 of them behind desks. We are taking them away from desks and putting them on the frontline. We are also investing in technology. For example, the £75 million that I put into PoliceAI will transform the bureaucracy on which our police officers have to spend lots of their time, so that they can focus on the frontline.

I thank the Minister for her statement. I welcome the focus on police leadership, and look forward to reading the report in detail. I thank her for acknowledging that this Government are not the first to grapple with this issue. Those of us who have been around policing for a little while have seen lots of changes, whether police and crime commissioners, independent misconduct chairs, or the different entry routes that the Conservatives brought in and then went back on, and there is a real weariness about changes to these processes. Frontline officers want to know whether it will get easier to deliver on the priorities that they know the public have but that they do not really feel backed to deliver. Can she reassure the House that that will be at the centre—no matter what changes, well-intentioned though they might be, are made on the back of this report?

My hon. Friend is right. We have to be laser-focused on what will improve outcomes for the public and what will enable the police to do the job that we ask them to do. I do recommend that he reads the report—it is a very good read. At its heart, it says that we want our police to have sound judgment and common sense in their policing. We want them to be freed up to make the decisions that are commonsensical and the right thing to do. To do that, we have not only to strip away the bureaucracy and all the forms they have to fill in, but to ensure that they are trained to be the police officers we want them to be. How do we match that training with freeing up our police to get on and do the job that we all ask them to do in the first place?

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the noble Lords Blunkett and Herbert for the report, which is a welcome shining light on the challenges facing leadership in our police forces. I know at first hand from my constituency that police forces deal day in, day out with highly sensitive, dangerous and traumatic incidents. They keep us safe. It is deeply challenging work, and we are greatly indebted to them. That is why the findings of the report are so concerning.

The report shows that officers are too often hampered by scarce resources, excessive bureaucracy and conduct processes, which leave them unable to focus on delivering for the public. The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a return to the proper community and neighbourhood policing that our constituents want. For that to happen, officers must be properly supported and equipped to tackle the many issues facing our communities. Will the Minister set out what plans the Government have to increase the numbers of bobbies on the beat?

Even more concerning are the report’s findings on the inconsistent leadership standards across our police forces. The numerous instances of leaders falling short of the standards of integrity, honesty and professionalism expected of them—including in cases of cronyism, nepotism and abuses of power for sexual purpose—are appalling. It is clear that we need root-and-branch reform of the policing system, as the report calls for, to stamp out that bad behaviour, improve leadership and hold senior officers to the highest standard. Will the Minister confirm that that recommendation and others in the report will directly inform the forthcoming police reform Bill?

Taking those points in turn and working backwards, we are working with the Police Federation on data on police suicide. It is an area where there are some contested figures, and we are trying to rectify that so we have the right picture, as well as putting in place more comprehensive wellbeing support for officers and staff so that they can get support in the difficult jobs they are faced with.

The hon. Member asked whether the review will directly inform our reform agenda and the legislation we pass—absolutely it will. It is a very important part of the learnings that we will take forward.

The hon. Member points to nepotism and other challenges we have in policing. Hon. Members might have seen Lord Blunkett on the television yesterday talking about that. It is absolutely true, and many the reforms pointed to in the report that we will carefully consider are aimed at taking that away, whether through having a targeted direct entry scheme or the new rank of senior constable. A leadership fast stream has been recommended, which would be interesting to look at. I recommend that he looks at all those recommendations.

On bobbies on the beat, we have already increased the number of police on our streets by well over 3,000. As the hon. Member might know, we have a target of 13,000 police by the end of this Parliament.

I am fully supportive of Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester. It is the first time I can say that about a chief constable since the 1970s. We have had chief constables who were mad—James Anderton, who carried out his prejudice against the gay community because he had a line to God—and who were bad—Peter Fahy, who refused to take action on Pakistani and Kashmiri rape gangs because he was frightened of damaging relationships, and Ian Hopkins, who made it more dangerous for police officers to go to crime scenes and into houses, because the computer system did not work and they did not know whether they were going into a dangerous situation. Over those years I have come to believe that the most important decision is getting the right person in the position of chief constable. I hope that the report the Minister has referred to, which I have not read, will lead to that; the chief constable is the most important person by far.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and congratulate him on his honesty in his description of his previous chiefs. There are on average fewer than three applicants for each chief constable job, which is frankly woeful, and many are filled by internal applicants. We do not have the pool of people going for these jobs that we want to see. We had already said that through the police reform programme we would set up a national body to help with recruitment, as well as giving the Home Secretary new powers to remove chief constables in extreme circumstances. There is a lot in this report about how we can improve the pipeline up to the chief constable level, but also how we can achieve a better system of promotion within the chief constable ranks and ensure that we get diversity of talent, so that we have—as we would want—a good cohort of people applying for every single job.

I call the Father of the House.

I am grateful to the Minister for the £100 million grant she has given to Lincolnshire police and the transformative extra £12 million a year. We have been campaigning for that for years and have averted 400 job losses. When the Government do something right, it is right that we should say thank you. However, she may want to say a word about our problem. We are losing our excellent police and crime commissioner, Marc Jones—she could perhaps say a nice word about him—and those powers will be transferred to the mayor, but we have the Lincolnshire police and Humberside Police, and Humberside Police, of course, straddles two mayoralties, so she has a problem. May I urge her, in any local reorganisation, not to do away with small police forces such as Lincolnshire, to concentrate on old-fashioned policing—not woke, not courses, not staff—and to try to avoid throwing too many chairs up in the air with boundary reorganisation?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words about the funding for Lincolnshire and join him in praising his PCC—and indeed all PCCs. We never had a problem with the model in terms of the individuals who held those posts; it is more the elected model that we do not think is right. As he will know, Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe is currently reviewing for us what the structures should be in a reformed police force that would sit between a national police service and local police areas; the local police areas will be absolutely key, and he will have some very interesting things to say about them.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked for policing not to be woke, not to have courses and so on. There is a lot to unpick in what we want our police to do. We want them to have the skills to make common-sense, good, practical decisions to catch criminals and keep us all safe. In order to achieve that, we must make sure that there is good training, but that has been lacking. There has been very little leadership training at any level in policing. In the Army, 15 years after leaving Sandhurst a colonel in charge of 1,500 people would have had on average 72 weeks of leadership development, whereas in that same time a chief super in the Met would have had two or three weeks tops. That cannot be right. We have to teach people to be the leaders that we need them to be.

I thank those in the police service for their work; their job is not easy and indeed can be very challenging. I also welcome the Minister’s response to the report published by the police leadership commission. However, it grieves me to say that it remains a shocking and disturbing fact that many children of my ethnic descent experience being over-policed and under-protected. A report released earlier this year by the Children’s Commissioner showed that black children are more likely than white children to be strip-searched. I do not want any child in my constituency or this country to experience unnecessary strip-searches, and I do not want black children to experience strip-searches disproportionately. We need only mention Child Q to be reminded of that awful situation. I recognise that the police data on that, and on those issues, is poor and that improved police leadership is very much needed, so how will the Government strategy address that?

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her constant championing of this issue. She is right. We said in our manifesto that we would look at the powers on children and strip-searching. We have that job still to do, and we will do it in this Parliament; I would be very happy to work with her on it. She is also right that in some areas we have seen some improvements; on stop and search, for example, we have seen significant improvements, but there is a lack of data and an inconsistency in some of the data; we are looking at whether we can improve that so that we have the right picture before us.

The work the police leadership commission undertook involved a substantial amount of evidence from women and people from different ethnic minorities, who talked about their struggles within policing. We know that more people from different ethnic minority backgrounds leave at different stages, so there is a job to be done there, and that is highlighted in this report.