Met chief Mark Rowley grilled by MPs over force becoming ‘national disgrace’

Sir Mark Rowley was on Wednesday accused of helping to turn the Met into a “national disgrace” as MPs claimed that he had turned a “blind eye” to past failings in his force.

In an angry exchange at the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Conservative backbencher James Daly said the Met had been a “complete and utter mess” for a long time and the Commissioner as a former senior officer in the force was one of those responsible.

Another Conservative, Lee Anderson, his party’s deputy chairman, said he found it “pretty hard to believe” Sir Mark’s assertion to the committee that he could not recall any incidents that he had witnessed during his long police career. “You must have been walking round with your eyes closed,” Mr Anderson said, adding that the Met Commissioner was “in denial” about what had gone on in the past.

Sir Mark hit back by insisting that he had always stood for high standards and was currently “doubling down on standards more ferociously” than had been done for decades.

He added that it was “completely unacceptable” that the Met was still employing dozens of officers with criminal convictions and that he wanted stronger powers to enable the force to dismiss such individuals which he hoped the Home Secretary was about to introduce.

But he found himself under heavy fire during a hearing on policing priorities as Mr Daly accused him of contributing to the state of the Met which was recently condemned as institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic and blighted by widespread other failings in a damning report by Baroness Casey.

“The situation you find yourself in in this organisation is a national disgrace,” Mr Daly, the MP for Bury North, told Sir Mark. “It’s time that politicians called out the management of organisations like yours for what it is — a complete and utter mess for a long time.

“Senior police officers must have turned a blind eye. I can’t find any statement from you back in 2018 saying it’s outrageous we’ve got these police officers who shouldn’t be serving in the organisation.

“You seem to be typical of senior police officers at Met Police who have just gone along with this, gone along with this negligence, this incompetence, turned a blind eye. I have real concerns about that.”

Sir Mark said that during his previous six-year spell with the Met as an assistant commissioner he had chaired many disciplinary boards that had resulted in the dismissal of officers and insisted that since his return to the force last September he had been determinedly rooting out rogue police. “We have made much progress over the last few decades but it’s not enough and we are doubling down on standards more ferocious than has been done for five decades,” he said.

“We are removing people faster and tackling these issues. But the vast majority of our people are good people and a debate which turns this into pillory of the police root and branch is not something I am going to accept.”

Sir Mark added that he was “not tolerating” the continued employment of some officers, including those with criminal convictions and those accused of domestic and sexual abuse, but that he needed stronger powers to enable him to remove them.

It came as new figures revealed that more than 20,000 new police officers have been hired in England and Wales — meeting a Conservative manifesto pledge — but Britain’s biggest police force missed its individual target.

Out of 43 forces, the Metropolitan Police was the only one to miss its individual target, falling short by about 1,000. It was tasked with hiring 4,557 new officers but had provisionally recruited only 3,468 in the period, according to provisional Home Office figures.