Home Affairs yet to answer questions on critical report
HOME AFFAIRS is under pressure to answer key questions about its handling of Law Enforcement after alarming findings of an inspection that described political interference in day-to-day operations.
The committee spent £75,000 to bring in Her Majesty’s inspectors.
However, in a prepared statement yesterday to ‘clarify some areas’, the committee failed to explain what actions had led to officers complaining that they were being asked to take enforcement action by politicians; why it had failed to produce a medium term financial plan; why it had brought a member of the public in to a board meeting to confront the head of Law Enforcement and about what; why board meetings spent so much time discussing low-level issues such as flashing bike lights; or why action was agreed about operational Law Enforcement matters without a representative of Law Enforcement being present.
It has so far refused to open itself up to the detailed examination that a full States debate on the report would provide, instead saying it will provide clarification on ‘many areas’ at a Scrutiny hearing and in a statement at the next States meeting.
President Mary Lowe, pictured, dismissed the report’s implication that the committee was failing to offer the strategic direction it should – when the inspection took place there was no delivery plan in place for Law Enforcement and so it did not know what objectives the committee had set it and it revealed that budgets were being confirmed so late that money was being wasted.
‘Any suggestion that our committee has not operated strategically is simply not true,’ said Deputy Lowe, without offering any explanation of what had happened with financial planning.
‘People need only look at the context in which we commissioned the report in the first place to see that. The committee was formed in May 2016 and immediately recognised that we needed an inspection of Law Enforcement before we could determine its future strategic direction. The inspection was commissioned within nine months of taking office. In doing so, we also opened ourselves up as part of the inspection process, again recognising that the view of external inspectors would be invaluable for our committee’s future deliberation’s.’
Vice president Rob Prow appeared to allude to the criticism of deputies attempting to direct operational activity and bringing in a member of the public to confront the head of law enforcement, bypassing established complaint procedures.
‘The committee under its mandate does have “oversight” for issues of quality of service and we also have a duty to pass on representations we receive. This is not giving any direction but rather is us feeding in concerns or comments,’ he said, without specifying what type of concerns were being passed on or how.
‘It is for Law Enforcement to determine what if any action is taken on representations. The report makes some very sensible recommendations which can help improve this process and the committee is absolutely committed to deliver on that.’
In its two years in office, the committee has failed to deliver on a 2015 States resolution to enshrine in law the relationship with Law Enforcement, something that would give clear accountability and separation of operational and political oversight.
Asked by the Guernsey Press why this had not happened, when it would happen and how, without it, the public could have confidence there is sufficient distance between Law Enforcement and the political infrastructure, particularly given what the HMIC report says, Deputy Lowe again failed to address all the questions.
‘When considering the future of Law Enforcement at a strategic level, the committee noted that Law Enforcement had not been independently inspected for 10 years,’ she said.
‘It was deemed that the proper course of action would be to commission an independent review. The terms of reference set by the committee therefore deliberately went beyond the remit of just looking at operational matters.
‘We specifically requested that the inspectors looked at governance, including political relationship and interface. The committee’s position was that it would have been foolhardy for it to embark upon altering the structure and governance relationships already in place and embedded prior to that inspection being carried out.’
