Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Sharpe of Epsom on 19 October (HL Deb, col 1087) that seven officers were suspended from the Metropolitan Police Service on 31 March, how that figure relates to the statement by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on 18 November that “of the 3,500 officers who cannot be fully deployed, about 500 are suspended or on limited duties because they are under investigation for serious misconduct”; and if the two figures relate to comparable data, what are the reasons why seven officers were suspended on 31 March but 500 were suspended or on limited duties on 19 November.

The Home Office publishes these data as part of the Police Workforce Statistics. They show that, as of 31 March 2022, there were 7 officers suspended by the Metropolitan Police Service.

In addition, they show that there were also 2,718 Metropolitan Police Service officers on restricted or adjusted duties. This includes those officers for whom reasonable adjustments had been made under the Equality Act 2010.

There are three categories to limited duties – recuperative, adjusted or management restricted. Adjusted duties are those where workplace adjustment have been made to overcome barriers to working and depend on the officer discharging a substantive police role, which can be accommodated without unreasonable detriment to overall force effectiveness or resilience. Management restricted duties are those put in place where there is verifiable confidential or source sensitive information that questions the suitability of an officer to continue in their post and/or there are serious concerns which require management actions for the protection of individuals and the organisation, but where criminal or misconduct procedures are not warranted and the Chief Constable has lost confidence in the office continuing in their current role.

The Home Office does not hold the data cited by the Commissioner and cannot therefore make a comparison.