A force failing on every front

Discrimination

The report identifies institutional homophobia, misogyny and racism in the Met.

This can be seen in mistreatment and abuse of LGBTQ+, female and black, Asian and ethnic minority officers and staff, and unfair outcomes for these groups inside the organisation as a result of bias in processes and systems and in attitudes and behaviours.

There are unfair outcomes in communities that result from under-protection, from overpolicing, or from both; and a culture of playing down and denial of discrimination, and repeated unwillingness to accept and deal with institutional failures that let down Londoners, it says.

But the Met has only reluctantly accepted the existence of discrimination, preferring to ascribe it to a minority of “bad apples” and to systemic bias, the report added.

Sexism and misogyny

Sarah Everard’s murder and other horrific crimes perpetrated by serving Met officers against women in London have shone a light on the shocking treatment of and attitudes towards women in the Met, the report said.

Despite improvements in gender representation and increasingly flexible working practices, women are still not treated equally in the workforce. New female recruits resign at four times the rate of men.

Homophobia

While the relationship between the Met and London’s LGBTQ+ community is vastly different from what it was in the last century, it has been in decline in recent years, the report says.

Trust in the Met among LGBTQ+ Londoners has fallen at a faster rate than non-LGBTQ+ Londoners over the past seven years, coinciding with criticism of the Met’s defensive handling of Stephen Port’s murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor.

Racism

The Met’s representation of black, Asian and other ethnic minority officers falls far short of the diversity in London’s communities, and is even more unrepresentative at higher ranks or among women. At current rates, it will take at least 30 years to attain anything like ethnic balance, the report added.

Tackling corrosive and racist myths about needing to “lower the bar” in order to recruit more diversely, and addressing the racism experienced by officers and staff in the Met is necessary, the report said.

Two specialist units (Specialist Firearms MO19 and Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection PaDP)

The report found these two specialist units were well resourced, but marred by elitist attitudes and toxic cultures of bullying, racism, sexism and ableism.

Normal rules do not seem to apply or be applied in MO19, with junior ranking officers and trainers holding disproportionate power in their relationships with senior officers because of the importance of their “blue card” firearms status to Met operations.

In Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection, with which both Wayne Couzens and David Carrick served, the report found low morale, overtime-dependency and a “dark corner” of the Met, in which two of the most serious police offenders in British history had worked and where “banter” and a bullying culture were not challenged.

The Met and Londoners

In a growing and increasingly diverse city, the Met has tried but failed to ensure that its workforce fully reflects all the communities it serves, the review says.

More crimes are being reported but fewer cleared up, the report says. In the same period, public trust and confidence in the Met has fallen, hitting its lowest ever point, persistently lower among black Londoners, but now falling sharply in communities that have traditionally scored them highly.

The Peelian principle of policing by consent is at risk, the report warns.

Resources and austerity

The Met has been challenged significantly during a period of financial austerity, the report finds. It has prioritised officer numbers, but even these fell below 30,000 during the last decade.

Other steps taken to deliver efficiencies have weakened the management and delivery of frontline policing in the capital and its connection to Londoners.

Met spending levels are now about £700m, or 18%, lower in real terms than they were 10 years ago, the report adds.

Spending on contracted services more than doubled from £24m in 2017-18 to £54.5m in 2021-22.

Spending on external consultants, excluding HR, finance and commercial services, more than tripled from £10.4m in 2015-16 to £32.1m in 2021-22. For the years 2017-18 to 2020-21, it was spending approximately £50m a year on consultants.

How the Met is run

The Met’s management systems have resulted in an organisation that is incoherent and unstrategic, the report concludes.

Poorly implemented systems of recruitment, vetting, management, training and promotion, with specialist and frontline units competing for resources, allow a culture in which poor performance, behaviours and attitudes can go unchallenged.