Metropolitan Police Report by Sir Richard Henriques

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 30th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

Redactions are made to protect the anonymity of victims coming forward and to make sure that we do not discourage other victims from coming forward in future cases. We expect the Home Office to consider the Henriques report and the IOPC recommendations and, at that stage, will consider whether any further steps should be taken.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, Sir Richard Henriques said he could not understand why the Metropolitan Police was looking for further redactions. He said to the Telegraph in July:

“I am racking my brains trying to think of what possible covert methodology [the Met Police] are referring to. There were no secret bugs or undercover officers… There may be some areas that would need to be taken out because I looked at a number of other investigations and some information is not in the public domain, but that only constituted a tiny proportion of the … report.”


So even the author of the report wants it published. Please can the Government push ahead to make sure this happens as soon as possible?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I am afraid that I cannot make that undertaking at the moment, but the Government agree that there should be a general right to anonymity before charge for all offences. But there will be exceptional circumstances where there are legitimate policing reasons to name a suspect—for example, to make a public warning about a wanted individual. In other cases, it is important to preserve the anonymity of those coming forward with allegations that may not pass the threshold, as they would damage their reputation if they were made public.