Turning up the Heat

The heat is being turned up on the Police Federation over its disgraceful behaviour  during the Plebgate scandal, rightly so if you ask me, and here's a hard-hitting leader column from the Times which paints a sorry picture of trade union that appears to be completely out of control.  

Now this appears to be an issue where all the main parties at Westminster are singing from the same hymn sheet, so you would think that Government would have cross party support in Parliament for taking effective action that would require the Police Federation to clean up its act.

Curiously it's the Conservatives who are leading the charge with Tory MP, David Davis (a former shadow home secretary), calling for Ministers to seize some of the assets of the Police Federation - if union leaders fail to carry out the wide ranging reforms recommended by an recent independent inquiry by Sir David Normington.

More power to his elbow, I say, but where are the Labour and Lib Dems spokespeople you have to ask?     

Unbecoming Behaviour

We will probably never know what Andrew Mitchell said, but the deplorable role of the Police Federation is clearer

It is one scandal that involves an actual gate. The saga of what Andrew Mitchell, then the Chief Whip, said to police officers at the gates of 10 Downing Street on the evening of September 19, 2012, is the story that refused to die. It is likely there will never be a final verdict on whether Mr Mitchell used the derogatory word “pleb” (which he denies) to describe the officers who refused to open the main gate so that the Chief Whip could cycle out.

One thing, however, is clear. The role of the Police Federation, which represents all police officers up to and including the rank of Chief Inspector, has been lamentable. This has been apparent enough already but The Times has interviewed an impeccable witness. Ian Richardson served for 30 years in the Metropolitan Police and retired in October 2012 with an unblemished record. He was present in Downing Street on the night of the gate scandal.

Mr Richardson did not hear Mr Mitchell say the disputed word “pleb” but does confirm that Mr Mitchell swore in the presence of an officer, which Mr Mitchell himself has confirmed and apologised for. It was Mr Richardson who suggested that his colleague PC Toby Rowland write down the details as he assumed that the Chief Whip, who had been threatened with arrest, might choose to make an official complaint. Leaving Downing Street that night, however, he still hoped that he had heard the last of the incident.

It was the escalation of the event into a full-scale crisis for the police that inspired Mr Richardson’s withering account of the part played by the Police Federation. Far from dying a natural death, the story was running across all national media, whipped up and exploited by representatives of the Police Federation who were offering an account which, in Mr Richardson’s testimony, was entirely unfair to Mr Mitchell.

Nobody speaking for the Police Federation at any point sought out Mr Richardson to ascertain his view. Yet John Tully, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, proceeded to appear on television and lead demands for the Chief Whip’s resignation. Mr Richardson responded by delivering a letter to Chief Superintendent Andy Tarrant, head of the Diplomatic Protection Group, to make it plain that the stories that were running across many media, with the active connivance of police representatives, were untrue. The exploitation of the story was compounded when a police officer, remarkably, chose to pretend he had heard Mr Mitchell say the disputed words. Officials from the Police Federation then engineered a meeting with Mr Mitchell in his constituency of Sutton Coldfield. Their unreliable account of that meeting opened officers up to a misconduct inquiry when Mr Mitchell recorded the exchange.

This quite disgraceful catalogue of police fictions means it is hard not to conclude that the Police Federation, which had voiced its vehement opposition to cuts and reforms that the Government was imposing on police budgets, saw the affair of Mr Mitchell’s bicycle as a way to conduct its campaign by another means. Of all the public services, the police is the least unchanged in decades. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, and Tom Winsor, her Chief Inspector of Constabulary, have shown great fortitude in sticking to their reform plans.

It does not take much cynicism, given the way police officers have behaved, to suppose that there was a concerted campaign to bring down a Cabinet Minister. Mr Richardson’s objective in speaking out is to distinguish between ordinary police officers, most of whom do a difficult job well, and the political chicanery of some of those who purport to represent them in public. The 125,000 members of the discredited Police Federation deserve better.