Metropolitan Police Service

The catalogue of failings at the Met is rightly a serious concern for the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London. The Home Secretary has said that the Met is just not getting the basics right, but sadly the Home Office is not getting the basics right either. When acting commissioner Sir Stephen House gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee in April, he said it was not just a case of “a few bad apples”, but a systemic problem that the Met needed to deal with. As the Met accounts for 25% of policing and has not only responsibility for London, our capital city, but national responsibilities and even international responsibilities, for example around the investigation of war crimes, what consideration has the Minister given not only to issues of performance, leadership and culture, but to whether there should be a review of the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Police?