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Oversight Board 14th October - MOPAC MAP Paper

  1. Purpose of this Paper
    1. The purpose of this report to set out the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime’s (DMPC) key areas of interest in respect of MPS work on the Mayor’s Action Plan for Transparency, Accountability and Trust in Policing (MAP).  The MAP is a standing item on the Oversight Board agenda and some of these issues will be raised at that meeting.
  2. Introduction
    1. As you will be aware, we are approaching the two-year anniversary of the publication of the Mayor’s Action Plan (13 November 2022). This marks a significant milestone in delivery against all the actions – many of which the MPS have completed, as referenced in the MPS tracker – and it is now important that we take stock of delivery to date, consider what impact this work has had, and look forward to what more needs to be done.
    2. Progress has been made across the Action Plan, including in the following areas:
  • Improvements to Officer Public and Personal Safety Training to focus on procedural justice and conflict management as a result of the handcuffing review.  
  • The mobilisation of a substantial programme of outreach and recruitment to meet agreed targets that has improved the overall success rates for Black, Asian and Multiple Ethnic Heritage candidates. 
  • Promising pilots in partnership with local VCS organisations to ensure the lived experiences and cultural and historical context of communities, and their experience of stop and search, is central to frontline officer training.  
  • Improved transparency through the publication of data on police custody and the use of more thorough searches (intimate parts exposed). 
    1. Nonetheless, it is notable that the majority of the outstanding actions from previous Oversight Boards relate to work on this area. That is a concern. The Deputy Mayor would like to see swift action in progressing and concluding these.
  1. Information for Consideration
    1. In the 18 months since the Plan was published, the MPS has completed 21 of the 23 actions listed, with the remaining two on track or in progress. These actions are now incorporated within the Stride Action Plan. 
    2. This work does not exist in isolation and there are a further 100+ actions internally within the MPS driving activity towards delivering the outcomes set out by the Mayor. In addition, work with partners across the criminal justice system is ongoing to identify and resolve disproportionality, and differential treatment and intersectionality are key themes within the Met’s Violence Against Women and Girls Action Plan.
    3. The Met recognises there is more to do in this space, and we welcome that. We have been involved in the development of the STRIDE action plan for 2022/23 and will continue to work closely to deliver the aims of the Mayor’s Action Plan.
    4. Areas, some of which are outstanding actions, where the Deputy Mayor would like to see progress include:
  • Road Traffic Stops Pilot – London led the way with collecting data on road traffic stops in a six-month pilot following the Mayor’s Action Plan, and this approach has been adopted by the National Police Race Action Plan. While the MPS has completed the pilot and published its findings, it is actively working with the National Race Action Plan team on the commitment to record ethnicity of traffic stops. It continues to be our view that the MPS should continue to collect this data and provide leadership and direction to the other force areas.
  • Safer Schools Review Work into Disproportionality – this work formed part of the response to the Judicial Review into the criminalisation of Black children. The final report does not, we believe, address this issue and this should be rectified quickly. The DMPC believes the MPS should progress the partnership work on Safer Schools Officers (SSOs) identified in the report as a priority. This will include having a clear understanding internally and externally of how the MPS is taking a ‘child-first’ approach to policing. This means being clear about the practice that will make this a reality and the data which will allow us – and the public – to oversee this approach and have confidence that it is happening.
  • Community Engagement and Scrutiny Review – the ongoing work to review and reimagine the future of community-led scrutiny and engagement is moving at pace and is a substantial programme which will equally benefit the Met and Londoners. Working jointly to ensure this is a success will be a critical part of rebuilding public trust and confidence in policing. The DMPC has been clear, and the Commissioner has agreed, that this is something the Met should be supporting and working in partnership with MOPAC on – including in terms of allocating resource. It is important the practicalities of that are explored urgently now and that discussion is progressed as a matter of urgency.
  • Body Worn Video Research – The MPS committed to this ground-breaking piece of research, but it took some time to agree the parameters, including whether MOPAC could have direct access to the footage. It was agreed that MPS officers would be trained to code the data instead. Unfortunately, the ongoing QA process has identified inconsistencies in the coding, which present some concerns for the research. This issue urgently needs to be resolved to ensure the research can be completed.
  • Complaints and Misconduct – In preparing for the September Public Review Meeting (now postponed to March), the lack of access to data on complaints and conduct limited how much could be done with the data in terms of scrutiny and oversight. In addition, MOPAC’s ability to review the data, the creation of a ‘learning portal’ on the MPS website, was an agreed action following the 2020/21 complainant survey, which has yet to be implemented. The DMPC believes this is important for transparency, which strongly relates to trust in the MPS. There is currently no easy way for members of the public to look at a collated record in a single location of all recommendations made to the MPS, agreed responses and actions subsequently undertaken. Black communities already have lower trust and confidence, and it is vital that their complaints will be dealt with fairly. MOPAC needs to be able to monitor improvements in this area through access to accurate data on ethnicity and disproportionality.
  • Handcuffing Review – The review was welcome, but we wish to understand whether it has had the intended impact. There had been a long outstanding action for the MPS to provide MOPAC with cross-referenced stop and search and handcuffing data. Currently this has to be manually counted, but the MPS informed the June 2022 Oversight Board meeting that there was some data on this. It has yet to be shared with MOPAC. Also, changes are required to the IT systems to make this an automated process and those changes have yet to be delivered (tied to the implementation of the new IT system) and the DMPC would like to understand when this will happen.
  • Community-led Training – This was an important element of the work for communities, and the DMPC would like to understand in more depth both the impact of what has already been delivered and how it will be consistently delivered in future across London.
    1. On 5 December 2022, the Public Review meeting for the Mayor’s Action Plan will mark the two-year anniversary and will be held in City Hall. It will be vital to show the impact and outcomes of the work delivered as part of the Mayor’s Action Plan, to provide concrete examples of how the legacy of this work will be measured and maintained, and how we will know whether this work is having a meaningful impact on communities.
    2. Finally, given that we are at the two-year anniversary, it would be helpful to know how the MPS is planning to integrate the aims of this work into the Commissioner’s 100-day plan and new Strategy. It would also be helpful to understand how the MPS will progress work on its performance framework for trust and confidence more generally, and how this will dock in with existing and future performance governance frameworks.

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