MPS still falling short on race and faith but is not ‘institutionally racist’

The Race and Faith Inquiry into the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has found there is a lot it can do to ensure fairness but it is not “institutionally racist”.

Among its findings are that more people from minority backgrounds or faiths are still more likely to be disciplined, leave the service early and fail to attain promotion as their white male colleagues.

They feel unfairly treated and marginalised.

The MPS should be more flexible in its recruitment processes including initiating direct entry into senior ranks and ending the right for line managers to veto promotion or sideways advancement.
The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) commissioned the inquiry 18 months ago and published its report on July 7, receiving some criticism for the timing of its publication – the fifth anniversary of the London bombings.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson asked race and disability campaigner, Cindy Butts, to chair the inquiry, which sought to respond to a number of high-profile allegations, such as former Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur’s claims over discrimination. The inquiry focused on internal rather than external relationships.

The Race and Faith Inquiry Panel acknowledged the improvements that the MPS has made in terms of its performance in the field of equality and diversity over the last decade since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry but also heard “sad and disturbing accounts” from black and minority ethnic (BME) officers and staff of differential treatment, which led it to conclude that excellence and innovation in some areas sit uncomfortably with the differential experiences of BME officers and staff in others.

“There are some quick wins to be achieved from a pragmatic de-cluttering of processes and practices within the MPS,” the report states, “particularly in respect of promotion and selection procedures. Accretions of bureaucracy and an understandable but now outmoded adherence to consequences of the competency based model of selection block easy access to opportunities to advance, through the ranks and grades or sideways into other specialities.”

The report adds that the concept of institutional racism served to progress diversity issues well. When the expression was first coined it had a powerful impact and the concept undoubtedly had strategic value in driving changes. However, “as a consequence of rhetorical inflation, the term is used too glibly as a blanket indictment and as such has become a barrier to reform”.

It also described the concept as a millstone around the neck of the MPS, obscuring any understanding of the nature of any continuing endemic racism in that or any other large organisation. There is also a risk, as Sir Paul Stephenson highlighted, that individual responsibility will be obscured within a quest for collective responsibility.

The inquiry heard mixed views about how effectively the MPS engages with its 19 staff associations, all of which receive support, through funding for a coordinator for office facilities to facility time to conduct business. This ranges from a day per week for some executive members/chairs to a full-time secondment for the chair of the Metropolitan Black Police Association (MetBPA).
The inquiry failed to gain a clear sense from senior managers of whether the MPS was maximising the benefits offered by such an extensive and well-developed network.

The fact that diversity appears never to be subject to serious and critical debate, despite the high levels of negative coverage, specifically around race and to a lesser extent faith, raises questions over the willingness of the most senior managers at the MPS to understand their personal responsibilities in relation to equality and diversity, reinforcing the message that it is down to ‘someone else’.

The inquiry agrees with the Commissioner and the then vice-chair of the MPA that the era of ‘champions’ for diversity has served its time. It served a purpose in identifying a visible leader but it als