Chief Constable Dismissal Procedures — House of Commons, 2015-10-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for this opportunity to raise in an Adjournment debate the issue of the role of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the police and crime commissioner in chief constable dismissal procedures. Inevitably, this relates to the recent experience of the Avon and Somerset constabulary and of its former chief constable, Nick Gargan The Avon and Somerset constabulary has a wonderful history and reputation. It is a fine police force, if not one of the finest in the country, and it deserves the best possible leadership. It has now been without a chief constable since May 2014, and there are concerns that more than £500,000 has been spent, and that the inquiry has been mishandled, in the ultimate removal of Mr Gargan The story started with a slew of lurid, even criminal, allegations. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) will cover in detail the failings of the IPCC, it is worth noting that it did nothing to stop rumours abounding. It continued to pretend that criminal charges were being considered when they were not, and used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to investigate. One of the team examining the issues was the support commissioner, a Mrs Williams, who was not necessarily impartial as she herself was the subject of an earlier unrelated complaint from Mr Gargan Although in some ways the police and crime commissioner may have been a victim of the process, Mrs Sue Mountstevens is not herself without blame. She has an elected mandate to oversee the police force in Avon and Somerset. She used this, shortly after her initial election, to remove the previous chief constable and was then instrumental in appointing Mr Gargan. When the report on Mr Gargan was ultimately produced, recommending eight written warnings for misconduct, her initial reaction was to accept it, but she later changed her mind and applied under section 38 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 to force the chief constable to resign This change of mind came about because of letters from superintendents and from the Police Federation indicating their lack of confidence in the chief constable. However, that correspondence must have been predicated on the IPCC report, and on leaked information pertaining to it, that we now know to be fundamentally flawed. So the lack of confidence in the chief constable was based on rumour and error, not on facts. This led to the removal of a second chief constable during this police and crime commissioner’s term of office, but it was done essentially because of the PCC’s willingness to bow to pressure, and not because of a mature considered judgment This leads me to the issue of the section 38 powers and how they were used. I have corresponded with Sir Thomas Winsor about this, and he has sent me a thoughtful letter and a copy of a valuable lecture that he gave in relation to these powers. In his letter, he says that the use of the powers in this instance does not involve double jeopardy and that "the chief constable was therefore not dismissed for the misconduct of which he was found guilty; as said, he could not have been, because there was no finding of gross misconduct". That is to say that Mr Gargan was not fired for misconduct because it had not been gross misconduct. That is intelligent sophistry, but it is none the less sophistical. I disagree with it because the loss of confidence was instrumentally caused by the misconduct allegations and the punishment for misconduct. Additionally, a number of leaks relating to criminal activity and to some of the material found on Mr Gargan’s telephone led people to think that much more serious things had happened than were in fact proved.