Pleb Gate

[David Guyatt]

That's all well and good, but you have to find the ethics first...

Plebgate: David Davis calls for royal commission into police ethics

Tory calls for IPCC to become 'British Untouchables' and says police should wear microphones to address decline in trust

• Rowena Mason, political correspondent
  
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 23 October 2013 10.33 BST
  

David Davis said UK needed tougher regulator to address 'crisis of ethics' in the force, which could overrule police chiefs. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex Features

A senior Conservative and close ally of the former chief whip Andrew Mitchell has called for a royal commission to investigate the "crisis of ethics" in the police, as three chief constables prepare for questioning by a committee of MPs over issues raised by the Plebgate affair.
David Davis said police should wear microphones and cameras to record their actions to address a decline in public trust an idea that has won the support of Nick Herbert, a former policing minister, who said the idea was "worth piloting".
The call came as Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Britain's most senior officer, admitted the Plebgate row had clouded the public view of Scotland Yard and had taken too long to deal with.
Speaking on LBC on Wednesday, he said: "During the time this thing has been an issue, the Met has been performing better than ever. We've just got to live with the reality - the newspaper headlines, the fact that you're talking about it, clouds the fact that crime's coming down at its fastest for 30 years.
"This issue's got to be resolved and we've got to deal with it. We're all eager to see the outcome of this inquiry and that we get back to some kind of normality, because I think it's not good for the police and it's not good for public confidence. I'm determined to get to the bottom of it, we've got a thorough investigation and we really now have to await the outcome of that."
Davis, a former Conservative leadership candidate, also said the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) should be given a bigger status to become a "British Untouchables" an elite squad to weed out corruption.
Mitchell was forced to resign as chief whip last year after he was accused of calling officers "fucking plebs" at the gates of Downing Street, but he has always claimed to have been "stitched up" by police.
Several officers have been arrested on suspicion of misconduct.
The suggestion of giving greater monitoring powers to the police came as senior officers prepared to give evidence to the home affairs committee about a second aspect of the Mitchell case a meeting with Police Federation representatives days after the original row.
Three chief constables from West Mercia, Warkwickshire and the West Midlands are under pressure to explain why they have not disciplined officers from their forces accused of misrepresenting this meeting.
The three more junior officers, all representatives of the Police Federation, will also appear before MPs to explain why they said Mitchell had refused to say what happened when a recording contradicted their account.
Writing in the Times, Davis said giving police recording devices could help those who are wrongly accused.
"The police put millions of innocent people under surveillance in order to catch a tiny minority of wrongdoers," he said. "Perhaps now it is time to make officers wear a camera and microphone while on duty.
"When they tried this in California, use of force by police officers dropped by two-thirds in a year. This technology could also help to defend police officers who have vexatious claims made against them."
The senior MP said the UK needed a much tougher regulator to address a "crisis of ethics" in the force, which could overrule police chiefs if necessary.
"Earlier this year a parliamentary inquiry concluded that the Independent Police Complaints Commission 'has neither the powers nor the resources that it needs to get to the truth when the integrity of the police is in doubt'," Davis said.
"The government should respond by giving the IPCC the powers and resources to outrank and overrule every chief of police in the land to become a British 'Untouchables'. Never again should a police force be able to delay or frustrate an IPCC investigation."
He said the Mitchell case was the "latest in a long list of police investigations set up to seek the truth but conducted as clumsy coverups".
Herbert, the former policing minister, said the suggestion of cameras and recording devices was worth trialling.
"I think it's worth piloting, but of course there will be arguments either way, and the news that those who rail against the surveillance society and so on should now be urging a wider surveillance, although you can of course argue that this is a case of the citizens actually keeping an eye on state and the exercise of the state power," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Herbert said the three chief constables had a lot of explaining to do about why they have not disciplined the officers and called for them to rethink their decision.