Harman: Police misogyny allegations should result in immediate suspension

Harriet Harman has argued that allegations of misogyny and sexism against serving police officers should result in their immediate suspension and that findings of sexual misconduct should lead to instant dismissal.

Asking an urgent question in parliament this afternoon, the long-serving Labour backbencher asked the Home Secretary to make a statement on sexual misconduct in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and the police more widely.

Harman stressed that Wayne Couzens, recently convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering Sarah Everard while she was walking home earlier this year, used his police warrant card and handcuffs to commit the crimes.

“Since the full horror of this was made public at the sentencing hearing, there has been an outpouring about the failure of the police to deal with misogyny and sexism within the force. Women need to be able to trust the police not fear them,” Harman said.

“That means we need to be certain that allegations of sexism and misogyny result in immediate suspension, not just removal from the frontline, immediate suspension from the police; that findings of sexual misconduct lead to instant dismissal; that vetting and training is sorted urgently.”

Kit Malthouse, answering for the government, said that “we all agree with [Harman’s] sentiments”, adding: “This kind of behaviour has no place in British policing and she is right that we need to pay constant attention to the processes and products that policing have to root out this behaviour and deal with it once and for all.”

He described the office of constable as a “sacred and special one within our society”, but insisted that while the government must do everything it can to protect its integrity “even constables are owed due process”.

The minister said it was important that there is a “robust system” for complaints and “detecting abhorrent behaviour” and one which, where that behaviour is found, allows for it to be examined and ​gives officers a “fair hearing”.

Malthouse reiterated to MPs this afternoon that the government is launching two inquiries. Harman welcomed the investigations announced but said the “basic issues” that she identified should be tackled now, before the start of the probes.

In a letter to Priti Patel last month, the Labour MP set out a seven-point plan for reforming the police service. She told the Home Secretary that any serving police officers against whom there was an allegation of violence against women should be suspended.

Harman advised that any officer who admitted or was found guilty of such an offence should be immediately dismissed, all recruits should be pre-screened for their attitudes towards women and there should be checks when police transfer between forces.

She also called for training courses for officers asking them to examine their own attitudes to women, and said anyone who failed to report an officer for an allegations of violence against women should be dismissed from the police service.

Harman today reiterated her call for Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick to resign from her role, telling Malthouse: “We need firm leadership from the police, from the top of the police, and recognition that big change is needed.”

The exchange in parliament came as Cressida Dick told City Hall this afternoon that plain-clothes police officers in London will now video call a uniformed colleague to confirm their identity when stopping a lone woman.

The commissioner said that “the onus is on the officer” to make the woman they are arresting feel safe, and said the video call would be “”instigated by the officer and not by the woman having to ask for this”.

“In the very unusual circumstance in which a plain-clothes officer is talking to a lone female, which is likely to be extremely unusual in London, we would expect them to go to every effort first of all to recognise that the woman may feel uncomfortable, to explain themselves well, to identify themselves well. It would normally be the case that they would be in a pair anyway,” Dick said.

Everard was abducted and murdered by Couzens while walking home from a friend’s house in March. Couzens kidnapped her under the guise of an arrest. He has been given a ‘whole-life’ prison term.

Dick faced calls to resign over the MPSs’ violent handling of a vigil for Everard, during which an officer was photographed kneeling on a woman’s back as crowds gathered with flowers and tributes to the 33-year-old.

She came under further pressure this year over the police investigation of the death of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in north London when officer took “non-official and inappropriate photographs” of their bodies.