Keir Starmer – 2023 Statement on the Baroness Casey Report

The statement made by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 21 March 2023.

This week I will announce details of Labour’s national mission on crime, one of five missions to give Britain its future back.

These missions are about long-term plans to tackle long-term problems.

And for those on the receiving end, there is no problem that has such a profound daily impact on their life as crime.

From the antisocial behaviour that blights too many neighbourhoods and town centres.

To the knife crime that is rising again.

And violence against women and girls that is shamefully high.

So in light of the shocking report by Baroness Casey today, I want to bring forward the announcement of part of that mission.

Today I can announce that part of our crime mission will be:

To raise confidence in every police force to its highest level.

I know this will be difficult, but like our other missions, it is ambitious, serious and measurable.

Every day across our country, we know brave police officers put their safety on the line to protect us all.

Risking their safety for ours.

I know that, because in my role as Director of Public Prosecutions I worked with many of them to bring criminals to justice.

We owe them our thanks.

But we also have to face the reality that public confidence in policing has been shaken to its core in recent years.

By the hollowing out of neighbourhood policing.

The collapse in the charge and prosecution rates.

The delays in bringing criminals to justice.

And, as we have seen today, evidence of serious failures on standards.

Including with the Met – the failure to root out police officers who themselves had committed the most terrible and unthinkable crimes.

There will be police forces, outside of London, who might shrug their shoulders and say – this isn’t us.

But I have worked in criminal justice for decades and I say to them: wake up.

The findings in the Casey report are a warning for every police force.

Confidence must be restored.

Policing by consent depends on trust.

When that breaks down, policing becomes harder and crime thrives.

And of course, there is a special focus today on the Metropolitan Police following Casey’s devastating report.

She catalogues, in grim detail, the culture, attitudes and practices of a police force that has lost its way.

She pulls no punches in exposing a police force where:

– Poor management and basic lack of workforce planning

– Predatory and unacceptable behaviour have been allowed to flourish.

– Londoners let down with the huge loss of neighbourhood policing.

– Public protection failures that have put women and girls at greater risk.

Across the force she found: institutional racism, institutional misogyny and institutional homophobia.

Page after page, the report provides both a detailed diagnosis of what’s gone wrong and a blueprint for radical reform.

The strength of its findings require an immediate and urgent response.

Without that, confidence in policing cannot be restored.

The fight against crime will be weakened.

People will continue to feel let down and fearful.

A government that I lead would accept the findings of the report in full.

We would work, not just with the Met, but with policing institutions and forces across the country to ensure that deep reforms and changes are made.

The new Met Commissioner Mark Rowley has our support in the work he has now begun to turn it around.

But he must go further and faster. And he will have our support in doing that.

I know that there are officers right across the Met who are desperate to see these improvements put into place and action taken to rebuild the confidence of Londoners.

But mark my words: I will be relentless in demanding progress and change.

The reforms needed, will be, as the report suggests, “on a par” with the “transformation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service of Northern Ireland”.

Note that word “service”.

Having played my part in that transformation, I know how serious a job it is to make that sort of deep cultural change to an institution.

It requires extraordinary leadership, an iron will to make real change.

It means being ruthless on weeding out those who will not change or are changing too slowly.

It means tough disciplinary standards – swift action on those who continue to act against the new values of the organisation.

A proper partnership between government and the police service to get the job done.

And above all it means changing the police from a force to a service – with public service values at its heart.

From standing above communities, to standing with them.

That is the route to radical change and it needs a total commitment from the police to achieve it.

That’s why I will expect radical change in the Met – no excuses.

London is a diverse city – that is its beauty.

And if we can get Catholics to serve in Northern Ireland, reach out across communities there, then I will not accept any special pleading that the Met cannot represent modern London.

But I have to say: you cannot separate the failings laid out in black and white today from the political choices that have led us here.

The report makes clear, there has been a ‘hands off’ approach to policing since 2011.

This approach has been accompanied by haphazard cuts.

People feeling that law enforcement has effectively withdrawn from swathes of the country.

Accountability has been destroyed.

Progress halted and then slammed into reverse.

After 13 years of Tory government, policing is yet another public service that is collapsing.

No longer serving those who rely on it, sacrificed to a Tory hands-off ideology that has failed.

And until we change course, we will carry on down this path of decline.

Successive Conservative prime ministers have diminished the fight against crime and done nothing to reform the police.

In short: they have been negligent.

It remains extraordinary that, even now after the terrible examples of violence against women from police officers, there are no mandatory national rules for police forces on vetting.

It is left to 43 different police forces to do their own thing.

I would put an end this situation and in Labour’s first term we would:

– Bring in national standards for all police forces to include mandatory vetting, training and disciplinary procedures

– Bring in a stronger accountability regime to turn around failing forces.

– Rebuild neighbourhood policing with 13,000 more police.

– Get specialist 999 call handlers, trained in domestic violence, in every police control room.

– Set up a dedicated, specialist rape unit in every Police force in the country.

But throughout my whole career, I have seen reports come and go.

Moments like this, missed.

The biggest danger today is that this becomes just another report rather than the beginning of real, lasting change.

It cannot be an occasion for even more words and too little action.

There needs to be a reckoning.

And there needs to be change.

A change for Londoners.

A change for those good police officers, who are fed up of being let down by a negligent Government.

And change for the public who deserve a police service that they can have confidence in.

The British policing model which we should cherish began here in London nearly two hundred years ago.

Unlike most forces across the world our police are guardians not guards, rooted in the powerful tradition of policing by consent where the police are the public and the public are the police.

But that vital tradition is in peril.

And without the biggest overhaul in policing since the force began, I fear for its future.

We must rebuild confidence.

Today is a day for action.