Blunkett: police leadership needs "ethical reset"
A major review of policing, set to be published tomorrow, will conclude there are “significant causes for concern” around leadership and call for a “fundamental overhaul” of the service.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg ahead of the report’s release, Lord Blunkett said the service “isn’t good enough” and that morale and motivation across policing needed a “reset”.
He noted that none of England and Wales’ 43 police forces were rated “outstanding” for leadership in the most recent round of inspections. Almost a third of forces were assessed as requiring improvement, and two as inadequate. Separately, the former home secretary said eight serving or former chief constables are currently under disciplinary investigation or awaiting the outcome of one.
Commissioned by the College of Policing in the context of declining public confidence in the police, the review, which Lord Blunkett co-authored with the former Conservative policing minister Lord Herbert, will point to a scarcity of resources, excessive paperwork, and officers left “demotivated” by risk-averse leadership cultures.
Asked about claims of “two-tier policing” — a term invoked by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in the Commons last month in relation to the killing of Henry Nowak — Blunkett acknowledged a “perception” problem while rejecting the framing itself. He drew a line from the 1999 Macpherson report’s findings on institutional racism to what he called a swing of the pendulum toward accusations of “wokeness”, adding that the review found “no room for culture wars” on either side. Policing’s job, he said, was “to deliver”.
The full report is due to be published on Monday, 6 July.