Police discrimination panellist outraged
By politics.co.uk staff
A member of a panel investigating the root causes of discrimination in the Metropolitan police has quit his post after claiming City Hall’s intervention had damaged its credibility.
Kit Malthouse, who is London mayor Boris Johnson’s senior policing aide and chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, has handed the MPA the power to write the inquiry’s final report.
Bob Purkiss, one of the four-person panel investigating discrimination issues, has resigned in protest that the inquiry is not able to write the report itself.
“The report was supposed to be written by the panel. Kit Malthouse decided it would not be written by them. If you have an inquiry into the Metropolitan police service and MPA, nobody in the MPS or MPA should be writing the final report,” he told the Guardian newspaper.
Mr Purkiss had been working under MPA deputy chair Cindy Butts on the panel to explore the extent to which discrimination limits officers of different races and faiths’ careers.
“No report will be produced without the panel having reviewed, amended, added to, or subtracted from, and then, after several iterations, finally approved,” Mr Malthouse said in response.
