John Harris Memorial Lecture 2024 - a speech by Cmsr Sir Mark Rowley and Dep Cmsr Dame Lynne Owens

Below is a transcript of a speech delivered by Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and Deputy Commissioner Dame Lynne Owens, at the Police Foundation, on Wednesday 18 September 2024.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley:

The context we police in

Thank you for coming.

As the founder of the Police Foundation, Lord Harris’ legacy will have touched almost all of us in this room. Policing can only succeed – the theme of today’s speech – with challenge and new ideas from bright minds like those at the Foundation. We are extremely grateful to the Foundation, and to Rick and Sara, for hosting us this evening.

Two years on from coming back to policing as Commissioner and Deputy we wanted to give an update on where we are with policing in London and some thoughts about what policing needs to succeed.

I am going to speak to you first about the context in which policing is operating in London, some of the challenges facing front-line officers and the support they need to succeed. Lynne will then talk about what we are doing in London and what are the challenges and opportunities for reform nationally.

As leaders of this incredible organisation, serving an incredible city, it is our duty and responsibility to reform the Met. Today we will talk about the progress we’re making, but also where we need help from others. We don’t seek to deflect responsibility for success, but no organisation as complex and as essential as the Met can succeed by ourselves.

So, we are going to present a challenge – to leaders across policing – ourselves included – to politicians, others in oversight roles, and to the public, media and wider commentators. The challenge is to support policing to succeed. Because if it doesn’t, the communities we protect cannot thrive.

But first, the context.

The same principles have driven my approach to policing since my days as a fresh new PC in Birmingham; through the streets, towns and suburbs of Surrey; to London and the Met:

• It is done without fear or favour

• It is done for you, not against you

• It is done with you, not to you: policing only functions with the consent of the people.

• And it is done with precision, given the disproportionate impact of a few offenders on the most vulnerable locations and people.

Today the joint effort between policing and communities is dangerously stretched as our society is facing wave upon wave of new pressures –

• From public services under strain, the most visible symbol of which in London is probably the number of people living on the streets or in mental health crisis;

• From racial and religious disharmony, demonstrated by the rioting that occurred around the country last month and the tensions and protests in London related to the terror attack of 7 October last year and subsequent conflict;

• From new technologies which accelerate the global connectivity of crime and open new opportunities for new forms of abuse and manipulation, and the proliferation of criminal online activity,

These cumulative pressures, amid a context of declining trust in institutions, have seen absolutely unprecedented strain on the police.

• Calls to the police on 999 have increased an average of 5% year on year for the past decade and now stand at 12 million a year, with another 20 million contacts via 101 and online reporting;

• And there has been a massive increase in fraud reports, part of a steep rise in cyber and cyber-enabled crime – ransomware, data theft, grooming, stalking and harassment;

• Public order offences in England and Wales are running at 475,000 a year compared with 150,000 a decade ago – 60,000 in London;

• And there’s a sharp rise in reports of high harm crime such as child sexual abuse and exploitation, domestic abuse, and of serious and organised crime, such as human trafficking. The College of Policing and NPCC now estimate 3,000 Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) offences are recorded every day, with a sobering 1 in 12 women being victims each year.

A lot of these numbers, particularly for ‘hidden’ high harm offences such as rape, are rising due to greater awareness and a greater willingness to report, and I welcome that.

But we must meet that greater willingness to report with an effort across the criminal justice system to meet that trust, by investigating and where necessary charging – and prosecuting.

Lynne will update you later on the progress we are making, on tackling violence against women and girls. But we know there is much more to do.

As a result of societal and technological change, the crimes we deal with now are more complex to solve. Over 90% have a digital element – that requires officers with the right skills to investigate, and the time to do it.

And yet –

In the last 15 years there have been three strategic defence reviews, countless strategic reviews of elements of the health and social care system, but no Government-led strategic review of policing or public safety. Indeed, that the Police Foundation felt the need to launch their own – culminating in their excellent report in early 2022 – which shows the gap in the market.

In fact, for almost 15 years the only central strategy for policing seems to have been to employ as many officers as possible, despite dwindling financial resources. No meaningful investment in capabilities or technology – in fact capital allocations to policing were reduced to zero, so investment in technology required cutting operational budgets at a time of wider cuts. No investment in join-up of absurdly disparate systems and an actual reduction in investment in training and leadership.

Operationally, the long-term effects of no plan to keep pace with the world around us are most heavily felt by the frontline.

Setting officers up to succeed

Most weeks, Lynne and I have the sad duty of contacting officers who have been injured; writing a note, making a call or visiting them in hospital. I can tell you that daily around 18 of our officers are punched, bitten, racially abused and worse – around two a week are seriously injured. Including officers such as the two who were attacked with a sword in Hainault in April, and whose bravery was widely covered in the media. In one incident recently an officer was driven at while trying to stop a stolen car, leaving him requiring extensive surgery – you’d hope this would be an isolated case, but sadly it isn’t. Some of these officers are lucky to be alive – and most months I have the solemn duty to lay a wreath at memorials for fallen officers.

And how does society thank them?

With insults.

I was scrolling through some of the comments beneath posts about the Palestine protests the weekend before last. It happens every time we police mass gatherings – a riot of noise about injustice or bias. The police are ‘useless’, ‘biased’, ‘pathetic’, even ‘shameful’.

I’ll tell you what’s shameful: the abuse of our officers and the silence of many in authority.

We should be very clear: when people, be they politicians or the public, throw accusations and slurs at the police, they put them in danger by emboldening thugs.

Some people won’t care about that – the criminals – but everyone else should. I say to all those throwing insults: be very careful which side of the line you are standing.

You heard this from HMIC last week. This is what they said about impartiality and policing protests:

“Senior politicians should take great care to make sure they are in possession of the full facts before making public statements that can have a detrimental effect on the public perception of police impartiality.

. . .

We formed the view that the polarised positions taken by politicians and the public … sometimes leaves the police in an invidious position.”

We police without fear or favour, and for everyone. It does no one any favours for this to be deliberately undermined to drive clicks on social media. Worse, we have seen it increasing the violence against officers.

The national federation survey earlier this year showed that 95% of officers said that how the police are treated by Government has a negative effect on their morale. That is just one indication of how they feel.

The consequence is a growing crisis in officers’ confidence to act. And that makes us all less safe.

It is not just about abuse and intimidation. The system we have created to hold officers to account has also got out of kilter.

A stark example is the case of PC Fisher who was driving to the scene of a live terrorist attack under the most unimaginable pressure. As a result of a mistake, he crashed and found himself under a long IOPC investigation culminating in a one-week crown court trial for dangerous driving. Late last year he was rightly acquitted by a jury.

I can think of no other country where an officer rushing towards the scene of a terrorist attack, who makes a mistake, would be pursued for misconduct and prosecuted over four years. The right answer would surely have been some reflection, some re-training and re-testing so he could get back to protecting the public.

The system that holds officers to account needs to pass the common-sense test. It should be timely, fair and respected by both officers and the public. It isn’t.

I believe we are seeing the impact of this on our streets. Stop and search – an important tactic when used well, which takes knives and weapons off our streets - has declined massively, and the arrest rate in London is also reducing.

We know that a third of officers say that reduced confidence has led them to voluntarily surrender their public order accreditation, a third say they are giving up their taser accreditation, and over a quarter their firearms tickets. This means fewer officers doing the high-risk jobs we need them to do. That risks London becoming less safe.

Officers should know that when they follow their training and act in good faith, that from their sergeant to their Commissioner they will be supported. This is the approach in the health service. It cannot be right that one part of the public sector – which also makes life and death decisions – should be held to a different standard to others.

No one has been firmer on standards in policing than me – I have talked about it a lot, and don’t propose to say more today. But there is no paradox or contradiction in wanting to support the vast majority of officers who are delivering for the public in exceptional circumstances.

Going outside policing for four years, as I did before I took this job, helped me see our workforce differently. Working with many in the private sector, from start-up tech companies to ‘big 4’ consulting firms, I saw better pay and conditions, the latest technology and smarter buildings. But it helped me to appreciate more deeply the thing the police have, that the commercial sector doesn’t: the utterly extraordinary commitment of our people to the mission. That is, what the private sector would call a competitive advantage. We see it day after day - the compassion of dedicated detectives, the bravery of officers rushing towards danger, and simply the stress of officers and staff in an overstretched service not wanting to let communities down despite everything.

But that advantage is only valuable if we make proper use of it. So, I ask some simple questions: can we really say that we are currently setting our officers up to succeed?

What are the foundations that underpin success?

It is fairly obvious this will include excellent training, technology to meet the modern standards and be efficient, equipment that meets the tough challenges on the street, buildings fit for work and victims of crime, and leaders trained to the highest levels supported by the intelligence, coordination, planning and strategy functions that any big organisation needs. In short: fixing our foundations., which have been broken by a combination of budget cuts, growing demand and a politically driven rhetoric that the measure of police capability is simply officer numbers.

The Chief Inspector of Constabulary said this year:

There are still too many police officers working in roles that could be better…y performed by police staff. The [uplift] target is now hindering efficiency and effectiveness, not helping it. The Government should abolish this target and allow chief constables the freedom to establish the balanced workforce they need.

Providing the right service to our communities needs an appropriate, sustainable funding model – and one that recognises the unique challenges of policing our capital city. Over the past 10 years, the Met has been trying to police more people, with less money, in the most populous and fastest growing city in the UK, at a time when crime is more complex, and more expensive to fight than ever before. Sydney and New York have budgets per head 50% higher than London.

We are working hard to reform but are doing so in a context where our budget is heading off a cliff. Given the financial pressures of the past decade, Commissioners and Mayors have understandably pulled every lever possible to balance the books. We can do that no longer.

We have relied on our reserves to a level which is unsustainable. This limits our ability to invest to deliver efficiencies. We are beholden to an annual process of funding allocation, which provides no stability on which to plan and run an organisation of the scale and complexity of the Met.

Further, since 2010, we have reduced the size of our estate from 620 to around 200 operational buildings. We did so to save £70m to sustain officer numbers and raise over £1bn. We cannot reduce further, and so that source of funding has run its course.

Much of our remaining estate is in a woeful state. We have funding to refurbish the existing stations – believe it or not – every 120 years. If nothing else changes, within the next decade or so we expect to have to close up to half our current buildings due to them being no longer habitable or legally compliant.

Financial shortfalls have been passed from one year to the next and have now landed in our lap. So not only are we left with the damage to repair but also a cliff edge budget for next year of hundreds of millions deficit on current assumptions.

Believe me, officers are as frustrated with our imperfections as the public are.

But their commitment, and the commitment of thousands like them, is the reason I love policing.

They are the reason why I know policing will, with some help, succeed.

Deputy Commissioner Lynne Owens:

Setting The Met up to Succeed

So our plan to set the Met up to succeed, A New Met for London, set out our mission: to deliver More Trust, Less Crime and High Standards. I want to talk about how by fixing the foundations of the Met, embedding the values of policing by consent and delivering community crime fighting we are making that reform real.

Fixing the Foundations

The first, and probably least glamorous component of our reform programme is the essential work to fix our foundations. Now, I can’t claim that building an effective HR, finance, technology or transformation function is the most exciting part of police reform.

But it is essential.

Reducing budgets have made for hard choices for a generation of police leaders, particularly with their hands tied due to the obsession with police officer numbers as the measure of success – but I’ll say a bit more on that soon.

When we arrived in the Met we had no workforce plan and a broken finance function – at least in part because our antiquated technology does not join these things up. Officers were in posts invisible to the centre, meaning we couldn’t plan or accurately focus resources on the areas that matter most to the public.

With some workloads of over 30 crime reports each, rape investigators rightly reflected their frustration at the service that they were able to provide to victims.

We are now mid-way through a programme to increase staffing in our rape, missing persons and child exploitation teams. With a more inexperienced workforce this doesn’t come without pain as we require detectives from other specialisms to support this important work. These choices aren’t easy, and we are alive to the implications of this for the affected officers, and our ability to sustain their much valued service in London.

We have also moved proactive teams which were directed from HQ back into their communities. That means local officers making decisions about where to deploy resources to tackle local problems – working with the people who are affected to keep them safe.

Mark talked about the national dis-investment in training and leadership development.

We are seeking to reverse that. That’s why we’ve given 5 days of training to every frontline leader - that’s over 8,000 people since April last year - and are now extending that programme to more senior leaders as we continue with our ambition to establish a new Leadership Academy. It is also why we have reset our values and principles and embarked upon an unprecedented reform and re-training programme, to build a strong and healthy culture throughout the Met that we can all be proud of.

And we’re equipping our officers better so that we’re not fighting 21st century criminals with 20th century technology. You might not be blown away by this – but we’ve given every officer a mobile phone and a laptop. They simply didn’t have them.

Now officers can work on the move– doing intelligence checks, writing up notes or transcribing statements – so they don’t have to return to the police station to do it. It’s pretty basic stuff, but they simply weren’t able to do it before.

There is much more to do to build on this work, and frankly progress is slow going. But building the basics of a functional organisation is essential to our improving for the public.

Policing by Consent

Alongside fixing our foundations is the second pillar of our reform programme: embedding the values of policing by consent, with policing in our communities at the heart of our mission to fight crime.

We committed in A New Met for London to putting more officers locally in neighbourhoods. More PCSOs, PCs, and supervisors, and a superintendent per borough, demonstrate good progress, but our efforts have been hampered – as the police inspectorate recognised last month – by the huge amount of police time that is now spent policing protests and events. The Israel-Gaza protests, Just Stop Oil and Notting Hill Carnival alone have taken nearly 70,000 shifts over the last year.

Just think. 70,000 shifts. That’s the equivalent of over half a million officer hours, often taken from visible policing on our streets, which is so valued by our communities.

It’s why the national and international capital city grant, which we receive to reflect our unique pressures is so important. An independent review commissioned by the Home Office agreed it is underfunded. We now think the gap is £240m.

Additionally, we face a recruitment crisis. This is one of our biggest challenges, partly due to the cost of living in London, partly due to the public narrative around policing; the relentless negativity that Mark spoke of.

But there is more too.

With other parts of the country offering cheaper rents and a lower cost of living, it’s a tough call for people to make. We expect officer numbers to decline overall this year.

And when we didn’t meet recruitment targets we got penalised by the Home Office. Over the last two years we were ‘fined’ almost £90m for this.

We could mitigate some of this by moving 2,500 officers out of back office roles and onto the frontline –we have the lowest ratio of staff to officers in the country. But that would only be possible if we are given the funding to backfill their roles with civilians – including call handlers, financial crime specialists, data and AI experts.

Put simply: You don’t police with consent if you don’t have the officers to police your communities.

We know how much local policing does to drive trust. Measures of trust and confidence vary, but after a long period of decline in those who think the Met is doing a good job for their communities, I am pleased that we are stabilizing and are now above the national average and the average for our most similar forces.

I could go on and highlight the work we are doing to improve our work with London’s diverse communities. We know that black Londoners have some of the lowest levels of trust in our organisation and we are determined to address this. That’s why next week we will be publishing our London version of the National Race Action Plan, built on providing greater protection for black communities who are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime, as well as addressing systemic issues in our own organisation.

Community crime-fighting approach

The third pillar of our reform plan is a focus on community crime-fighting which sees us working with communities and using data and intelligence to deliver precision policing.

Our approach to Violence Against Women and Girls is a good example of what we have been seeking to achieve. In piloting the VAWG100, which ranks offenders based on the extent and the severity of the harm they cause, we are able to target those who pose the greatest risk to women and girls – tackling predators to better protect victims.

The project has identified high harm subjects, with 92 of them arrested for a total of 252 offences. 67 of these have been convicted so far.

Compared to a similar cohort the year before we used the index to identify the worst offenders, this new strategy more than doubled the likelihood of arrest for the top 100 offenders.

Our rape charge rate was below the national average which is 6.9%. Our charge rate has since increased from 4.2% to 9.4%. Of course, it’s nowhere near enough, and we must do more to improve outcomes for victims of other sexual offences, but it shows that where we focus our efforts, and make use of data and technology to deliver precise policing, we can succeed.

As we look to a more joined-up policing system the VAWG100 approach is something that could benefit from national rollout. But it would require investment in technology and data skills, locally and nationally, to be effective.

As well as targeting predators with better data and more resources we’re targeting them with technology. Through investment in Live Facial Recognition we have arrested over 360 wanted offenders, including for VAWG offences, and arrested 30 sex offenders in breach of their conditions.

And we’re changing our approach to investigations. By focusing more attention on the most solvable cases, using automation, and reducing officer caseloads we intend to improve the number of offenders we are bringing to justice. It’s early days and we can never take our eye off serious crime in London, but the evidence shows London is safer on serious violence and violence against women and girls than our similar forces.

So while you don’t necessarily see the absence of crime, it is happening. You don’t see crime reduction, but it is happening.

You don’t always see the work that underpins proactive and preventative policing, but it is happening. Such as our sustained work to tackle gun crime, currently at its lowest level in 15 years, using forensics and technology, alongside working closely with communities to gather intelligence.

It’s gratifying for our officers – but more than that, it’s a relief for our communities – when our proactive work takes down serious criminals, such as prolific supplier of drugs and guns who styled himself as ‘James Bond’. Well he’s now serving 16 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine and firearms.

And through Operation Yamata, tackling city lines we have closed down over 1000 drug lines, arrested over 700 people and seen sentences adding up to over 900 years.

Successes in tackling VAWG and serious violence, vital though they are, aren’t enough, and we know that we need to do more, much more, to tackle robbery and theft. Some of the work I have discussed should help address this, but we also need help from business here.

We know that 57,000 mobile phones are stolen every year. It might surprise people to know that the companies which run operating systems on our mobile phones - primarily Apple and Google – allow devices which have been reported to them as stolen, to re-register. We want industry to plug this significant loophole in their security; to block connections from lost and stolen devices. That would reduce the value of a stolen smartphone and make a real difference on our streets.

National Reform

I want to turn now to the national reforms we need to support the reform programme at the Met. From my vantage point at Surrey, the National Crime Agency and now back in London it looks to me as if, nationally, policing is at an inflection point. With a new Government wanting to take a stronger role, with legitimately high expectations on us to deliver: as a whole system we need to step up.

This is no time for being timid and waiting for Government to make decisions for us – as a group of leaders, whether Chiefs, PCCs, or heads of national bodies, we have to show true leadership, right across the system.

And let’s be honest, this is something we haven’t historically been very good at. My experience leading the NCA showed me that too often parochial interests undermine efforts to collaborate. Or our operational independence is used as an excuse not to pool sovereignty and powers.

It cannot be right that we do virtually everything 43 – often different – ways. It’s not efficient and it certainly isn’t effective.

With Mark, I am pleased to be part of a group of leaders who are, for the first time in my service, truly united not only on the need for reform, but also on the direction that reform should take. I don’t seek to speak for them today, but we collectively look forward to play our part with the new Government to shape the solutions we need.

The issues we are facing in the Met as we deliver our reforms are those faced not only by other forces, but by the wider structures of policing:

• A need to fix our foundations

• To set ourselves up to deliver for our communities, and focus on the frontline

• Build new capabilities to meet the new challenges that Mark talked about.

• And improve our governance and finance …

National problems need us to deliver national solutions. In the August 2011 riots we were too slow to mobilise resources across the country. I know, I was there. This summer the national policing structure did better and, as in 2011, officers on the frontline and those in command did incredible things in the face of appalling violence and hugely testing circumstances. But this year we were still inhibited by lack of data and shared technology; a leadership structure that relies on negotiation; and incoherent governance.

We were better, but still not good enough, undermined by lack of investment in join-up and central coordination.

As I have said, we can’t continue to deliver our service to the public in 43 different ways.

Variation at a local level, in order to respond to local needs, will always be important. But for specialist capabilities such as serious and organised crime, public order, firearms or complex investigations we have to deliver the right functions at the right level.

Only this week I was part of a nationwide conversation about provision of firearms ranges, with individual forces grasping for solutions themselves. It’s a great example of something of such significance that one national approach to deliver shared, well located facilities is the right solution.

So let’s be clear: despite the best efforts of many, voluntary collaboration has not worked, often driven by the personal veto of 86 players across chiefs and PCCs. Now is the time to look again at the balance between national, regional and local functions – to have a shared approach to workforce, finance, governance and technology.

The lack of a strategic plan for policing means that improvement and collaboration in IT has been woefully slow. We risk slipping further and further behind the private sector through the loss of investment, precipitated by the loss of capital grants from Government, and lack of join-up. I have yet to hear a single rational reason why 43 different approaches to IT and infrastructure investment is sensible.

Beyond that, the public won’t be aware of the inefficiency where police officers moving from force to force have to resign and re-join, or that there is no coherent career structure across the country for police staff or agreement on the role of staff and officers from force to force.

By supporting our workforce we will improve our service to the public. That means better training in skills and leadership and looking at workforce mix. Of course officer numbers matter, but the public now understands that performance in the NHS isn’t only driven by how many doctors and nurses you have – allied professionals like physios, radiologists and pharmacists are critical too. Our crime fighting capability is our people – we need the right ones, with the right skills, supported by the right technology and the right level of resources. Don’t tie our hands by tying us to a headline officer number alone.

Finally, we need to look again at the national structures in policing. Building out from the work of the College of Policing, NPCC and NCA we must deliver a stronger centre, able to coordinate much more effectively and ensure that the service the public gets is consistent and effective.

Policing will be talking about these issues more in the coming weeks and months, and we want to work with everyone in this room, and beyond, to get it right.

Conclusion

What the public needs from policing remains in many ways the same as it always has been – reassurance, safety, trust – but the context, as Mark set out, changes.

We’re operating today in a model that was designed in the 1960s – the same one Mark and I started our careers working in in the late 80s– and it hasn’t adjusted with the times. It has to adapt and modernise. In setting out the changes we are making to the Met, and these lessons for national policing, we are challenging everyone –ourselves, politicians, the public and the media – to support policing. To support all our officers and staff, and all those we work with, to succeed.