Metropolitan Police: Strip-search of Schoolgirl

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I outlined earlier, there are already two inquiries into the culture of the Metropolitan police in all its aspects—by Dame Louise Casey, who I know will do a thorough job, and following that, part 2 of the Angiolini review—but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to take care. There are 30,000-odd police officers in the Metropolitan police, the vast majority of whom are doing an extraordinary job and doing amazing things on a daily basis to keep us all safe from harm, and they deserve our thanks for doing that. They will be as outraged as we are at this event, and we need to learn the lessons on their behalf as well as on behalf of the Londoners we serve.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The disgraceful, abhorrent, sickening strip-search of child Q took place two years ago, yet the Minister stands at the Dispatch Box today and speaks about the processes around the investigation as if this is a system working as it should. It is not. The constant delay in the outcomes of such investigations is a part of the structural denial of justice to complainants against the Metropolitan police. Can the Minister tell the House when he first became aware of the case of child Q and what action he took immediately to safeguard children in London, and does he have no concern at all about the time it takes complaints such as this to conclude and be resolved?

[Kit Malthouse]

Of course we are concerned about the time it takes for complaints to be dealt with, which is why we changed the IOPC regulations at the end of 2019 to compel speedy investigations. It is the case now that if any investigation is going to take longer than 12 months, the IOPC must write to the appropriate authority—me or, for example, the Mayor of London—to explain why. The director general of the IOPC has done an outstanding job in driving the workload down and bringing more investigations in under 12 months, but there is obviously still a lot more work to do.