Andy Marsh and Andy Cooke gave evidence.

Q We will now hear oral evidence from Andy Marsh and Andy Cooke. We potentially have until 3.30 pm for this panel. Would the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Andy Cooke:

Good afternoon. I am Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary and His Majesty’s chief inspector of fire and rescue services.

Andy Marsh:

Hello, I am Andy Marsh, the chief exec and chief constable of the College of Policing of England and Wales.

Q Thank you both for your time this afternoon. Andy Marsh, I would like to start with you. The point about vetting has come up frequently. You may have heard it in the previous panel, and you may be aware that we also discussed it this morning. What is the College’s view on vetting?

Andy Marsh:

I am of the view that there has not been enough rigour in the way in which vetting responsibilities and duties have been conducted. I am also of the view—significantly because of high-profile cases, but also because of inspection work by Andy Cooke’s team—that not only have vetting processes been inadequate but they have not been complied with. The College has done two things as a start: we have rewritten the code of practice for vetting to introduce new standards, and we are about to launch a new authorised professional practice for vetting that will set new, more rigorous standards across England and Wales that address all of the areas for improvement addressed in Mr Cooke’s inspection report.

Is that enough? In my opinion it is not enough. When the spotlight moves on from this important area of safeguarding the public and the reputation of policing, will chiefs and police forces continue to apply the scrutiny and effort that is going into this at the moment? It is my intention—I have expressed this—for this to be an area of service provision that is high-risk and which the College proposes to license or authorise in each force vetting unit each year. There will be training and support for personnel, and there are good people in those force vetting units, but in my plan, if they do not achieve the required standards, they will not be allowed to do vetting. It will have to be done by another police force.

Q I might come to you, Andy Cooke, in a second for your reflections on that, but very briefly, when you write up your expectations, are you likely to put a new time limit on the period of vetting or do you have an alternative way of doing that?

Andy Marsh:

I am unlikely to put a new time limit on the period of vetting, because I think in the 21st century when people—I am talking about all employees and police officers—commit a misdemeanour or when something occurs that throws into doubt their vetting status, that happens in real time, and our vetting systems should be good enough to pick them up in real time as well. We cannot wait for periods of time.

I used to be responsible in England and Wales for firearms licensing, and that period I was responsible for saw a shift in doctrine from revisiting a licence every three or five years to revisiting someone’s safety to hold a weapon 24/7, 365 days a year. Our approach in principle, while complying with the code of practice and the authorised professional practice on vetting, is that there will be time thresholds for hard stops on renewal, but in my opinion and assessment, there is an expectation that vetting should be under constant review.

Q Do you think that is technologically possible?

Andy Marsh:

I do.

Q Andy Cooke, is the inspectorate of a similar mind to the College on this?

Andy Cooke:

I am fully supportive of the College’s desire to license vetting officers to practise. As you are well aware, the vetting inspection we conducted not too long ago had more recommendations than any inspection previously done. It showed policing in a pretty poor light. Some forces were doing okay, but overall it was not sufficient to protect the public or the reputation of policing. If policing cannot be sure it has the right people in it, that is a sad indictment on the force or forces across the country. There needs to be a continued focus on this area of policing. Licence to practise will assist in that, and the inspectorate will continue to look at these issues right across the forces across England and Wales.

Q Andy Cooke, clause 19 allows entry, search and seizure without a warrant under certain circumstances. Do you have any concerns over that power and how we can have confidence that it is being exercised properly?

Andy Cooke:

It is a power that will need to be closely monitored, but it is a power I am supportive of. The ability to recover stolen property in such circumstances is a real issue if policing is going to catch the people it needs to catch, particularly around the likes of mobile phone theft, which is endemic across large parts of the country. The inspectorate will obviously keep a close eye on it as part of the legitimacy of policing and the ethical context in which policing is conducted. It will form part of future inspections when necessary.

Thank you very much.

Q Welcome Andy Marsh and Andy Cooke. Let me take the opportunity to say thank you for all the work you and your teams do supporting policing across England and Wales. It is very much appreciated by all of us, both in Government and in Parliament.

Andy Marsh, can I continue the line of questioning about the warrantless power of entry where it is necessary to recover stolen goods when there is no time to get a warrant? Andy Cooke just mentioned that the inspectorate would keep a close eye on whether that power, if granted by Parliament, is being exercised properly. Could you confirm for the Committee’s benefit whether you would in due course, if this were passed, produce some authorised professional practice to make sure that police forces exercise the power in a way that is responsible?

Andy Marsh:

Minister Philp, as you are aware I am strongly supportive of police officers conducting all reasonable lines of inquiry to catch criminals and keep communities safe. It caused me great frustration as a chief if ever a letter landed on my desk to say, “My bike’s on sale on eBay, my daughter’s phone is in a house and you said you couldn’t do anything”.

We have already started our plans to hardwire this new power into our guidance, our training and our standard setting to do our very best, along with working in partnership with His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services to ensure that we use this power consistently in two respects. I do not want to see circumstances where the power should be used, where it is not and people could be caught and property returned; and I certainly do not want it to be used in such a way that would undermine confidence in policing. As in many things in policing, we need to get this just right. The College has a fundamental role in achieving consistency and getting it just right.

Q So do you, like Andy Cooke, support the inclusion of this measure in the Bill?

Andy Marsh:

I do.

Q And are you confident that, with the right guidance and inspection regime, it can be implemented in a reasonable and proportionate way?

Andy Marsh:

I am.

Q Thank you. Let me ask Andy Marsh again, about the statutory ethical policing code contained in clause 73, which includes a statutory duty of candour, which was one of Bishop James Jones’s recommendations following Hillsborough. Can you tell the Committee what kind of impact you think that will have on police conduct in general and, specifically, the duty of candour going forward?

Andy Marsh:

It should be a very significant moment in policing. The first code of ethics was put in place in 2014. I could explain to the Committee why we think we are able to improve on that, but we have to talk about why it is going to make a big difference. The College is able to put a code of practice in place which requires a chief constable to have due regard.

We wanted to make that code of practice as strong as possible around a duty of candour, but there were many other things in it—for example, a duty on a chief constable to ensure ethical behaviour in a force, through their processes, policies, reward recognition, promotion, application of the victims code, challenging unprofessional behaviour, looking after staff welfare, dealing with misconduct and vetting properly.

Even before we get to the duty of candour, which is very strong, this is the strongest lever the College of Policing can pull in order to bring about cultural change around standards in policing. We will be working with the launch of the second two parts of the code in January, which is different from the legal code. We will be working on supporting policing over a change programme to secure that cultural change, over many months—possibly years.

Q Great, thank you. May I ask Andy Cooke and Andy Marsh each in turn a question which has arisen a few times, both in this Committee’s proceedings today but also over the last year or two? It relates to the question of whether there should or should not be a separate offence for the assault of a retail worker.

As you know, we made assaulting a public-facing worker a statutory aggravating factor for other assault offences in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. We have already created a separate offence of assaulting emergency workers. Some people now say that we should have a separate offence for assaulting a retail worker, to give it more prominence. Others say, “Well, where do you draw the line?” You could have an offence for assaulting a teacher, a local councillor—and so it might go on. What is your opinion about whether there is any use in creating that separate, stand-alone offence?

Andy Cooke:

I think I am right in saying it is an offence in Scotland, but I do not know how much that has resulted in a change in offending behaviour. I have not particularly looked at that point. It is a question of where you draw the line. The key issue is not whether a new offence should be constructed for assaulting a shop worker. It is more about how well, or not, policing is dealing with assaults, full stop; and how well police officers are dealing with the offence of shoplifting and the ancillary offences that sometimes go with that. I am aware that the National Police Chiefs’ Council is doing an awful lot of work around this at the moment, working with the PCC for Sussex and yourself, Minister.

Certainly, there has been a large reduction in the number of positive outcomes or detections for shoplifting over the last five or six years. That is not acceptable. It is in line with an awful lot of the other core charge and outcome rates that we have seen across policing. This is more about ensuring that the police across England and Wales treat this more seriously, particularly where there are aggravated offences alongside, such as assault. That is what Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman is attempting to do on behalf of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Rather long-windedly, to come back to your initial question, without seeing the evidence for how that reduces offences or increases detections, I would not necessarily be in favour of a separate offence.

Q Before Andy Marsh answers the same question, you referred to the recently published retail crime action plan, which Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman authored in close consultation with me as Police Minister and with the Home Office. You highlighted the unacceptably low charge rates, which I agree with. What level of confidence do you have that that retail crime action plan will deliver those results? To what extent will you be able to follow that up in your regular PEEL inspections and your “all reasonable lines of inquiry” thematic next spring to make sure that that action plan, which is good on paper, is actually delivered in practice and delivers the results, which are more detections and arrests?

Andy Cooke:

All those issues will be captured by the police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy inspections that we do every two years on every police force across England and Wales. We will look at reasonable lines of inquiry particularly and at the overall outcome rates—not just charge rates, because the out-of-court disposals are important as well, as it is whatever is the best sanction to fit the individual and the community at the end of the day. We look right across that to ensure that policing is doing what it should be doing, as we do every week of the year, and will continue to do so.

This is a really important issue for me, because these are crimes that strike at the heart of communities and neighbourhoods. It is really important that policing gets confidence and trust back. Whether that is the confidence and trust of shop workers or across neighbourhoods and communities, whichever way it is, a large part of getting that confidence and trust back is by the police showing themselves to be effective in what they do. The police need to increase their efforts to do so.

Q I completely agree, as you know. Without the zero-tolerance approach, there is a risk of escalation. Andy Marsh, may I put the same question to you about the utility or not of a separate offence?

Andy Marsh:

The College is supporting policing with guidance around dealing with retail crime, particularly persistent offenders. I agree with everything that has been said: much more needs to be done in order to deal with this crime type.

In relation to the specific offence, I can see that there are two purposes to it. The first is that it might well act as a deterrent. The College of Policing holds the evidence base for policing. We cannot categorically tell you there is an evidence base for deterrence, but that would be one of the reasons for putting it in place. I think the second, more important reason is for Parliament to signal its concern about a particularly disruptive crime that damages the fabric of our communities and society. This sends out a signal that the police need to do better. I am supportive of the proposal.

Q It is not a proposal; it is from the Government—it is an idea that has been floated from time to time.

Moving on to a proposal contained in clause 21, which relates to giving police access to driver licence records—particularly the photograph—which currently are only readily accessible for road traffic purposes. The idea is that they can be used for facial recognition searches, where an image is retrieved from a crime scene from CCTV. That might include a shoplifting offence. This would make the DVLA driving licence database searchable by the police, in the same way that other databases are, including for facial recognition purposes. In your view, both Andy Marsh and Andy Cooke, would that assist the police in investigations? Is that a measure you would support?

Andy Marsh:

I am supportive.

Andy Cooke:

Yes, I support it. What goes alongside that is ensuring that the actions of the police on facial recognition are ethical and lawful. I am a big supporter of facial recognition used in the right way, and I think that opening up that database would benefit the detection of crime.

Q Excellent. My final question relates to clause 74, which is concerned with the appeal mechanism after a misconduct hearing. At the moment, if an officer is dismissed by the panel—which remains an independent-majority panel with the chief chairing it—the officer who has been dismissed can appeal to the police appeal tribunals. If the officer is left in post, however, there is no appeal the other way, so if the chief constable wants to sack the officer for misconduct and disagrees with the panel, there is no right of appeal. This clause would introduce such a right of appeal.

Do you agree with the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, in saying that this measure will help chief constables better to manage their workforce and root out officers guilty of misconduct where appropriate and where necessary?

Andy Cooke:

It would certainly help in relation to that. At the moment, the only recourse is judicial review, which as we know can be exceptionally expensive and difficult, so I see no problem at all in having that right of appeal for a chief constable.

Andy Marsh:

The code of ethics, which we have just been talking about, puts a responsibility—in fact, a duty—on a chief constable to discharge their responsibilities around standards, conduct and behaviour; and I have been in a position, as a chief, where I have not been able to do that because ultimately I haven’t had the decision on who I ultimately have serving alongside me as a police officer. They are not employees—they are servants of the Crown. I have found that to be a deeply unsatisfactory position, so I am supportive of this.

Good. Thank you.

Q My first question is to Andy Marsh on the issue of vetting, which he very eloquently said needs to be a constant. Do you not think, then, that there needs to be at least some guideline in law about the regularity of that vetting?

Andy Marsh:

Yes, I do. That is a periodic hard stop, let us say, where there is a full review, but there should be a number of different control measures, both automated data searches and a duty—a responsibility to report and self-report—that will occur in real time between those vetting periods.

Q Okay. What sort of timeframe would you put on that hard period?

Andy Marsh:

Whichever timeframe you chose, you could see reasons why it wouldn’t be right.

Q Ten years is currently the suggested—

Andy Marsh:

Ten years is the current one. I think to change that without massively increasing the capacity of vetting units would be to, let us say, write a cheque they couldn’t cash.

Q So currently, even if we were to legislate that the vetting had to be improved—

Andy Marsh:

If you were to legislate then the police would have to find the money, and it is often—

And it is currently not available.

Andy Marsh:

Difficult choices.

Q Difficult choices would have to be made in order to ensure that vetting was happening. I appreciate your honesty.

Andy Marsh:

I would say, “What is the best way of ensuring a trusted, ethical workforce that actually is enforcing highly frequent—I would debate highly frequent—more frequent, hard-stop vettings which would be very costly, with back-office capability?” That might, in my opinion, not be the best way of doing it. I would rather move to a more agile, 21st-century—

Q Automated.

Andy Marsh:

Yes, automated.

Database, AI and so on.

Andy Marsh:

Yes. So many of the searches that are required for vetting can be put into robotic processes, with ultimately the human being making the decision at the end.

Q Of course. You talk about there being an automated system. I have asked everybody who has sat in front of me today this question. Currently there is no crossover between behaviours found in courts in the United Kingdom; so in family courts, in civil courts in our country, that would not currently be being used in the vetting. Let’s say a domestic abuser was found to be a multiple domestic abuser of various different women, in the family courts in this country. Would that come up in your vetting?

Andy Marsh:

To directly answer your question, I don’t know. Possibly not.

The answer is no. I do know.

Andy Marsh:

But actually, if you had a multiple domestic abuser, I am pretty confident that they would be flagging on other systems.

Q Except that less than one in five people come forward to the criminal justice system.

Andy Marsh:

Excepting that.

Okay. Excepting the four in five that don’t come forward.

Andy Marsh:

I take your point.

Q Okay. But an automated system that had all of that data on it for vetting would be helpful?

Andy Marsh:

Yes.

Q What is your view on the suspension issue? I have unfortunately heard of a case where a police officer was suspended for safeguarding concerns, shall we say, and was put on paper-based duty, and the thing they were doing was the vetting. Do you think that officers who are under suspicion of issues of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse and safeguarding-related crimes should be suspended?

Andy Marsh:

Will you permit me a little commentary, rather than a yes to that?

Go for it, mate.

Andy Marsh:

I will tell you an anecdote, which I think will explain why this is dangerous. People can use the police complaints system for reasons other than simply securing justice and fairness for having been treated unfairly. As chief constable of Avon and Somerset, I became aware of two reports that I had in fact—and you will be shocked by this—raped the police and crime commissioner, Sue Mountstevens. I certainly had not, and the lady reporting that was in a mental ill health institution, but the crime recording rules required the police force to record that there was a rape, and I was named as a suspect. I would have thought that it would be farcical, wouldn’t it, for me to be suspended under such circumstances, given that there was not a grain of truth in that? There is a danger—

Q But it would be very easy for a professional person to initially triage such a case, for example, and do some very clear due diligence about somebody’s mental ill health, the likelihood and the timings. If there were any sort of case to be investigated and answered, do you not think that the person should then be suspended?

Andy Marsh:

Fairness and justice are for everyone, particularly victims of violence against women and girls; if you look at everything I have said and done in my career, you will see that that is what I genuinely believe. However, I believe that an automatic suspension would be swinging the pendulum way too far. I have given you a very simple example, which is of course ridiculous. What I have learned through 37 years in policing is that there are many, many different shades of ambiguity around situations.

I too will give you—

Andy Marsh:

Very rarely do we find right and wrong.

Q Of course, of course. It is funny that often it is only on this issue that there are only grey areas. A police officer in my police force—in West Midlands police—was put on light duties after he was considered a risk to children, and he used that to access the data. He went on to abuse, and has since been convicted of abusing, around 19 teenage boys. He used the powers of being put on desk duties in the police force to do that.

Andy Marsh:

That is shocking and disgraceful, and it should never have been allowed to happen.

Q I am afraid that I could probably come up with many more examples similar to that. You do not think that, in those circumstances, there should be a suspension.

Andy Marsh:

In the circumstances that you just described, of course. But I will say to this Committee that I think each case should be treated on its merits, with a very low threshold for suspension.

Q On the basis of it being currently treated on its merits, which we cannot necessarily legislate for, how many do you think are being suspended, left in police forces on separate duties, such as vetting, or, of those on that sort of suspension—as was the case in I think the Metropolitan police; it was definitely a police force—are training the new officers?

Andy Marsh:

I can write to you with that information, but I am afraid that I do not have it to hand.

Q Okay. That would be very helpful, thank you. Confidence that anything can be implemented is undoubtedly vital. Your eBay example was a good one. You stated that you were confident that all this could be implemented; however, you just said that the police would need to write a cheque, or that a massive cheque would have to be written for some of the ethics and standards things. If everything in the Bill were implemented—I invite you to comment, for example on how you think the drugs testing would be rolled out—how it is possible that everything will be implemented at the same time as prioritising violence against women and girls crimes in every force? How will it be implemented so that confidence is not lost?

Andy Marsh:

I do not think I said that I was confident that all the powers in the Bill could be implemented. I was answering the question about traceable property and the power to gain entry—that was the element that I was confident about.

Q Oh, specifically—apologies. Do you think that everything in the Bill could be implemented?

Andy Marsh:

I am supportive of the measures in the Bill. Some will undoubtedly come with a requirement to increase the resource.

Such as?

Andy Marsh:

The drugs testing would be a good example. I do not believe that there is currently a latent capacity waiting to do that.

There is currently not the capacity available to do that.

Andy Marsh:

No.

I didn’t think there was. Okay, thank you.

Andy Marsh, can I continue with you? I have an observation, following on from Jess Phillips, about what sounds like a nightmare, where you were accused of rape by somebody. Just as an observation, were that to happen to a Member of Parliament, you might find yourself being asked to stay away from the House. You might lose the Whip from the party you are a member of. It is an interesting observation that in this place, there is almost a presumption of guilt before anything else when it comes to this type of crime, where in theory Members of Parliament can have access to vulnerable people. It is an interesting dichotomy, I suppose, that where the police have access to vulnerable people the whole time there could be this same problem. As I say, that is more of an observation than me necessarily asking you to respond to itQ —

Andy Marsh:

Well since you make the observation, I am not sure, as a police officer, that most police officers would agree that the standards of conduct in Parliament are necessarily higher than the standards of conduct for a police officer—if you don’t mind me saying.

Q It is about the response to the standards of conduct; it is not necessarily the standards of behaviour, but the response to them and how Parliament responds.

Andy Marsh:

The College of Policing is responsible for a number of different products to support the professional standards that are maintained within policing. In relation to violence against women and girls, we conducted a super-complaint review in partnership with the Independent Office for Police Conduct and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and we found a number of weaknesses and flaws in the way that, for example, allegations of domestic abuse against police officers were dealt with.

We are working very hard to tighten up those shortcomings and make improvements. In fact, the lead for the violence against women and girls taskforce, Maggie Blyth, is now working as my deputy and using all the levers at the disposal of the college to hardwire those standards into the way we go about our business. I would challenge any suggestion that we have a soft attitude to violence against women and girls.

Q No, no—I wasn’t trying to suggest there was a soft attitude. I was just trying to say that there are lots of different examples.

I wanted to follow on from Minister Philp’s questions earlier about powers of entry, because I was fascinated by your response. You mentioned that you might see that somebody obviously has an iPhone in their house—it has been stolen and then found on the Find My iPhone app, so there is very hard evidence that it is definitely there, but a police officer cannot do anything about that. You mentioned similarly a bicycle that could be for sale—a daughter’s bicycle for sale on eBay, for instance. You talked about how you would give guidance to police officers on how they go about enforcing this, but I came away slightly more confused; this is more me as a layman, trying to understand how you go about doing your business.

What struck me is that at the one end of the scale through the Find My iPhone app, you are looking directly at a bleep that says, “This phone is in the front bedroom of this bloke’s house in Walthamstow” or wherever—other constituencies are available. You know for a fact that it is there because the electronic signature is there. If someone has a bicycle up on eBay, it is probably there because that is where the person is advertising it from, but you do not necessarily know for sure. At the other end of the scale, you have a hunch that somebody may have some stolen goods in their house, but you would obviously then get a search warrant. If you are writing the guidance, how do you find the point at which one side is very clearly, and the other is very clearly not, eligible for the powers of entry?

Andy Marsh:

There is a continuum of reasonable grounds and belief, which is written into this proposed legislation, that is actually very strong. It is about as strong as it gets in the judgment of a police officer. We will give forces written guidance, probably in authorised professional practice, and we will give them material on which they can be trained face to face in the classroom and material that can be used online.

Without a doubt, there will be some scenarios that will need to be debated among the groups of police officers engaging in professional development. We will also put this in the initial training curriculum. I am sure, given my confidence that we can introduce some guidance and training that would ensure consistency, that we will see a testing, through the judicial process, of what that belief actually means. At some stage, I am pretty confident that we will end up with a consistent interpretation of what it means under different circumstances.

Q There are different forces across the country. Some could be a bit more punchy about it, and some could be a bit more reticent about it, but eventually through legal testing in the courts you would come to a—

Andy Marsh:

It is my job, through the college, to ensure consistency. Within a bandwidth—Mr Cooke’s inspection reports show this for pretty much any aspect of policing—you will see forces that do more of something and less of something. Actually, it is my job to ensure that the good practice from the inspections conducted by HMIC is fed back into our guidance.

We have a practice bank which turns that good practice into examples on our website—I would welcome you all looking at that—for a range of things. That will be one of the ways in which we help forces interpret this. But I would not subscribe to any suggestion that it will be the wild west out there, and that you will have one force doing something completely different from another.

Q No, I am sure that is the case.

Andy Cooke, there will be a number of people who are going to be worried that the police may take advantage of these powers in order to get around the trouble of getting a search warrant. How would you reassure my constituents that that is not going to be the case and that we can be confident that this is going to be used for the legitimate reasons, which I am sure Andy Marsh will lay out? How can we be confident that that is not going to be broken?

Andy Cooke:

I think the first stage is the fact that it is an inspector’s written authority to do it, and it can initially be given verbally, but then the inspector has to put the name to that action and fully understand what the reasonable belief is to ensure that to happen.

Secondly, we will consider this as part of our inspection regime. When we look at the legitimacy of policing and at the powers of policing, we focus on stop and search and on use of force. We focus on the legitimacy of the powers that the police are using in any particular way. As this is a new power as well, if it is passed by Parliament, it will get particular attention from ourselves.

Q And you are both confident it will be safe.

Andy Cooke:

I am confident it is the right thing to do and the right law to pass. Will mistakes be made? Of course they will. Police officers are human like everyone else. Is there a danger of it being misused in a very small number of cases? Potentially—but that is the same for any power that policing has, which makes it so important that the right people come into policing.

That is really helpful. Thank you very much.

Q I just want to pick up on one point about the suspension issue that Jess Phillips, who is no longer in her place, was raising with you, because I did not totally understand your answer. What is the threshold for the suspension of a police officer?

Andy Marsh:

To explain the process, when a complaint is raised, internally and externally, the chief constable will have a delegated appropriate authority, which tends to be the deputy chief constable. They will have a pretty much weekly meeting, but sometimes it is a real-time daily meeting if something crops up that they need to consider.

The first thing that would happen is that a complaint would reach a threshold of gross misconduct or, indeed, criminal. Once it has reached that threshold, the deputy chief constable—the delegated appropriate authority—needs to make a decision about what should happen to that person. Should they be suspended? Can they continue with their duties? Should they engage in some degree of protected-type duty? What I can say, from my experience of working with police forces across England and Wales, is that the threshold and the tolerance before suspension has dropped substantially.

Q That does engage quite a significant issue because it is so different from what would happen in the ordinary workplace. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996, let us say an allegation of serious sexual harassment—maybe not a criminal offence, but misconduct—was advanced. The employer has a duty in law to sort of establish the basic facts. In the example you gave, if both the complainant said, “That never happened,” and everybody said it was not true, it would not meet the threshold. But if it does meet a threshold where there is, as I think Jess put it, a case to answer, in any normal workplace that would ordinarily result in suspension on full pay, pending a disciplinary process, at which the member of staff may end up exonerating themselves. But this system seems quite nebulous.

Andy Marsh:

No, I am not expressing it clearly, because if it would appear to be a substantial complaint—a complaint which would undermine the trust and confidence of the public should that officer remain serving—then they should be suspended. Actually, I can reassure you, in all the cases that I am aware of and that I look at where there are allegations of violence against women and girls, I see a very low threshold for suspension, so if I have misled you at all, I am sorry.

Q But what if it was just sexual harassment?

Andy Marsh:

Then they are very likely to be suspended, and I am really happy to write to the Committee and share the guidance and information—

Q I am not putting you on the spot; I am just trying to establish where the threshold sits.

Andy Marsh:

It is very low. If I was accused of any form of domestic abuse, verbal or physical, or coercive control, I can guarantee you that I would be suspended.

Okay, thank you.

Q I want to take you back to the shop workers issue. Minister Philp, in his comments, clearly demonstrated that the Government are a bit shy of having a specific charge related to assaults on shop workers. For the record, can you tell us why shoplifting and related crime does not get the attention it requires and that the public, shop workers and the USDAW would like it to have?

Andy Marsh:

In explaining this, I am in no way seeking to justify a lack of attention, but when a call is made to a police control room, they will triage it and they will use something called a threat, harm and risk matrix. If the offender has left the scene and no one is at immediate risk, that is unlikely to secure an immediate deployment. There is more likely to be a follow-up investigation. The retail crime action plan and guidance on our website, and all the focus on the use of images and facial recognition and on persistent offenders, is bringing a much sharper focus to an area of standards and police response that has slipped to an unacceptably low level.

Q You are saying that in recent times the police have not responded to shop crime in the way that they ought to have.

Andy Marsh:

Yes, that is very often the case. For example, if on the one hand you had an incident of shoplifting where the offender had left the scene—let’s say the items stolen were less than £50—but on the other hand you had a report of a domestic violence incident or some antisocial behaviour happening on the street right now, those two calls would be prioritised above the shoplifting.

Q How much of it is a resource issue? If there were more neighbourhood police, would that sort of thing get the attention everybody believes it deserves?

Andy Marsh:

When you look at the changes in crime type over the last decade, we have seen a very significant rise in what I would call complex crime and vulnerability. The answer is that the police need to be able to respond to complex crime and vulnerability, and they need to be able to secure the confidence of the public in their ability to deal with shoplifting. I am a big supporter of neighbourhood policing. We intend next year to introduce a professionalising neighbourhood policing programme, which will give neighbourhood officers, for example, not only the training and skills to deal with shoplifting, but the new powers on antisocial behaviour to keep their communities safe.

Q That is helpful. I wonder if either of you could educate me in another area. If somebody comes into your home and bashes you, is that level of crime higher than if it happens in a public place or a shop? Is the law different?

Andy Cooke:

No, the law is not different. The aggravating factor is that it is inside your house, not in a public space. People may consider that one is worse than the other, but at the end of the day the offence is the same, unless there is a weapon involved, as it obviously becomes a different offence after that—in private and in public—but both are equally serious.

Q Is there not the same level of aggravating factor if somebody goes into a corner shop, where someone lives over the shop, and bashing that person?

Andy Cooke:

The law would not necessarily say so. It would depend on the circumstances, on the weapons used and on whether it was a public or a private place. An open shop is, to a great extent, seen as a public place. The point I am trying to make is that an assault on a shop worker in a shop is a serious issue, and policing needs to do better to respond to these issues. I do not think there is any chief constable in the country who would disagree with that.

You asked if it was a resource issue. If there were more police officers, then they would be able to respond to more issues. Part of it is around prioritisation; and chief constables are responsible for the prioritisation that they choose. Have chief constables across the board got that prioritisation right? In my view, no, because a lot of the neighbourhood crimes we see—the thefts, car crime, burglaries, robberies—for some time have not been given sufficient credence, nor sufficiently tackled, as we have seen from the very low charge and disposal rates.

Q You said a few moments ago that the aggravating factor in a corner shop situation would not necessarily apply. Is there not a case for strengthening the law to protect the corner shop keeper or the person in Marks & Spencer who is assaulted? Should the fact that they are being attacked within their workplace not be an aggravating factor?

Andy Cooke:

I understand fully the point you are making. I think it might strengthen the response from the police, as opposed to strengthening the law. The question of whether there should be a separate offence for teachers or other people in the community has been asked already. There are enough laws to deal with this. It is the response from policing that needs to improve. The response from some of the retailers themselves—that is, the bigger retailers, who can afford to put more money into this—also needs to improve.

Thank you.

If there are no further questions, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. We will move on to the next panel. Thank you very much, the two Andys.