Lord Marlesford – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Marlesford on 2015-11-19.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in respect of each police force, they will give details of serving police officers who have been convicted of criminal offences and given custodial sentences during each of the last three years, giving in respect of each officer the name, rank, police force, nature of offence, date of conviction and sentence.

Lord Bates

The Home Office does not currently hold data centrally on police officers who have been convicted of criminal offences. However, as part of the continuing reforms to improve police integrity, the Home Office has introduced a new data collection via the Annual Data Requirement in 2015/16. This requires police forces to provide data to the Home Office on the number of misconduct cases and criminal investigations, as well as the outcomes of these. This data will not contain the names or details of specific officers involved, and will be collected and published at an aggregate level only. The publication date will be announced in advance on the gov.uk statistical release calendar: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements

As I mentioned during the oral question on this topic on 19 November 2015, there is a national “Disapproved Register” of officers struck-off from the police that is managed and maintained by the College of Policing, and available for use by vetting and anti-corruption officers. The College of Policing has begun to publish details of officers who have been added to the struck-off list following a public hearing: http://www.college.police.uk/News/College-news/Pages/Disapproved-Register-.aspx.

In the forthcoming Policing and Criminal Justice Bill, the Government will place this list on a statutory footing and require the College of Policing to maintain a published list of all officers who have been dismissed for Gross Misconduct.