Sir Tom Winsor interview: ‘Competence among some police officers is not what it should be’

The nation was shocked by the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who was then a serving Metropolitan policeman, in March. There has been a steady drip since of officers charged with sex offences, allegations of sexual grooming of victims, and claims that misogyny and sexism are tolerated in the service.

As head of the watchdog Winsor has the responsibility of uncovering the extent of the problem and offering solutions. Or, as it was put by Mina Smallman, the mother of the Wembley murder victims, to “get the rot out once and for all”.

Changing an organisation’s culture, Winsor acknowledges, is the hardest thing in leadership. Chief constables need to be more assiduous in “weeding out” officers who show a fondness for exercise of power or violence, or display homophobia, racism or misogynistic tendencies.

With inappropriate material increasingly being shared by officers on social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Winsor says random checks of their private and work phones would act as a deterrent. He is unconcerned about privacy implications, with police having to be held to higher standards than other professions because of their extraordinary powers.

“It seems to me that there is no strong case for saying there should not be random checks of their social media. If they put stuff up on Facebook, a public site, it’s public. WhatsApp communications are encrypted end to end, but they are still stored on the receiving device and indeed the sending device. So they can be interrogated.”

He wants a big improvement of the quality of professional standards units and counter-corruption squads, whose job it is to uncover misconduct. Some are staffed by the force’s “weaker detectives”.

“The competence and professional curiosity of some people in anti-corruption units and directorates of professional standards is not as high as it needs to be. The preference of a chief constable will usually be to put his or her very best detectives on murder squads and rape squads.”

Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick makes a statement after Wayne Couzens’s sentencing for the murder of Sarah Everard

HASAN ESEN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

Scotland Yard admitted mistakes in its vetting of Couzens when it missed his link to a flashing incident, but said that he would have been hired anyway because the claim was unproven. The most recent examination by Winsor’s inspectors, in 2019, revealed that some 37 per cent of Met personnel were inadequately vetted or unvetted, although efforts have been made since to cut the backlog.

Winsor says the vetting system needs further improvement and that higher standards to become a police officer are under consideration. He will consider all these issues in a wide-ranging inspection ordered by Priti Patel, the home secretary, following the Couzens case. Winsor will step down from the helm of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services in March so Patel’s brief will be one of his last, and one of the most important.

Sitting across from me at a large table in his office overlooking Victoria rail station in London, Winsor grins wryly as he points to a framed letter on the wall that details the 1874 inspection of Leicestershire Constabulary. In a report barely 50 words long, the inspector said that “everything appeared satisfactory, the men seemed efficient and the recruits appeared to be a very fair lot”.

“We go into more detail now,” Winsor chuckles.

In nearly a decade leading the watchdog he has overseen reports that have sometimes eviscerated the police, from raising concerns about the quality of child protection investigations to highlighting failures to solve high-volume crimes and the inability to tackle fraud. Chief constables quake at his ability to place them in special measures, as he has done in Greater Manchester, where the force failed to record a fifth of reported crimes.

MP Andrew Mitchell was in a bitter row with police over the “plebgate affair”

YUI MOK/PA

The Everard case is not the first time Winsor has been forced to warn about weakened trust in policing — he raised similar concerns after the Plebgate affair, the bitter public argument between police officers and the Tory MP Andrew Mitchell at the Downing Street gate in 2012. He reminded police of their confidentiality obligations in 2017 when there was a leak of allegations that detectives found pornographic images on the work computer of Damian Green, a cabinet minister. The sexual deception by undercover officers who entered relationships with their environmental activist targets also drew his ire. But today Winsor wishes to sound a warning of a different kind as he approaches the finish line.

Long an advocate of improved efficiency, Winsor offered advice to forces on how to reduce spending as they endured cuts of millions of pounds in the austerity era. Now, he warns, there is simply not enough money to address demand. The public may want officers to attend every burglary, knock down the doors of each person who downloads child abuse images and cut down on antisocial behaviour, but police chiefs must focus their scarce resources on crime that does the most harm. Winsor warns: “The public have to decide how much risk they’re going to take. Do we want to put money into policing or are we content that, in some respects, the police will not come, or they will do a cursory investigation?”

He is keenly aware of the creaking criminal justice system, with lengthy court backlogs, a shortage of judges and delays in investigations. It is “defective and dysfunctional” in too many respects. Politicians are simply not engaged enough in police, courts and probation issues because it rarely affects them, he says. “The votes are in the health service and education. [criminal justice] doesn’t get the attention of politicians and the devotion of money that it needs to in order to be as efficient and effective as it should be, because it’s just not politically as important to them. Until their lives or the lives of someone close to them are touched by it, and by then it becomes too late.”

He was shocked during a visit to Wandsworth prison, a “tenebrous, sepulchral and hellish place”. Inmates spent 23 hours a day in cells that were built by the Victorians for single occupancy but now house two or three men. When Winsor asked to see the library, the prison guards initially could not find the key. A high reoffending rate can be directly linked to poor rehabilitation while behind bars, he says. Underneath that deep sense of social justice, however, is a steely belief that violent offenders should be given harsh sentences as a deterrent.

Winsor recalls a Glaswegian judge, aptly called Lord Blades, who in the 1950s put a stop to “razor gangs” who were slashing each other with open blades. “When there was a conviction, he started at five years and added a year to the sentence for every stitch on the victim. So some of these men were going to jail for 20, 25, 30 years. And within 18 months it stopped.”

But he adds a note of caution: “Sentences for violent crime are getting longer, and that is putting pressure on prisons. Are the public prepared to pay for it?”

These tough-on-crime sentiments would be supported among many rank-and-file police officers, who initially were angry about the choice of Winsor, the former rail regulator, as the first chief inspector in more than 150 years with no background in policing. Despite his mandate to root out wrongdoing, and the many failings or misconduct cases he has highlighted over the years, Winsor is broadly supportive of them.

Cases such as Couzens and the Wembley police officers are “extraordinarily unusual” but “extraordinarily serious”. They anger the majority of decent officers: “You go into a police station and talk to just about everybody. They’ll just say how furious they are at the officers or staff members who do engage in this conduct because it brings all of them into a lower light. Nobody joins the police to get rich. They come for public service.”

They deal with the “most appalling circumstances” — brutal murder, sex offences, suicides, accidents where victims suffer horrendous injuries.

“They can’t look away. They’ve got to deal with it, and they do it with professionalism. And in many cases, very considerable bravery. And it affects them. It affects their mental health. If you’ve dealt with a child’s death or some of these other truly dreadful things, you don’t just clock off your shift and switch off. You live with that. You may live with that all of your life.”

Curriculum vitae

Born Broughty Ferry, Dundee. December 7, 1957

Education Grove Academy comprehensive school in Broughty Ferry; studied Scottish law at the University of Edinburgh, and petroleum law at the University of Dundee

Career Practised law after his graduation in 1979 and served as general counsel to the first rail regulator. Appointed by John Prescott as rail regulator in 1999 and served until 2004. Reviewed police pay and conditions on behalf of then home secretary Theresa May in 2010, announced as HM chief inspector of constabulary in 2012. Next steps - UK and international arbitration and mediation.

Family He is divorced and has two daughters

Quick fire

Uniform or plain clothes? In what context?
Police or fire? Both
Line of Duty or Life on Mars? Life on Mars (pictured)
Taser or baton? Baton first, Taser if necessary
Opera or pop? Opera
Policing or rail? That’s a big question.
Sunbathing or walking? Walking
Halloween or Bonfire Night? Bonfire night
Police or politicians? Hah!