Mayor wants overhaul of Met structure amid police failings
KHAN OPEN TO THE IDEA OF SPLITTING FORCE INTO REGIONAL DIVISIONS
THE Metropolitan Police could be split up with national and local policing roles hived off, the Mayor of London has suggested.
Sadiq Khan was responding to calls from the former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who said last week: “Because of all its national responsibilities – terrorism, war crime, all sorts of stuff – [the Met] gets distracted from core function of keeping Londoners safe.
“The average crimes people want dealt with are fraud, burglary, sexual offences and so on.”
The Met Police – which appointed Sir Mark Rowley as commissioner this week after Dame Cressida Dick was pushed out by the Mayor – is almost unique among UK forces in holding responsibility for a number of national issues, including counter-terrorism, diplomatic protection and international crime.
Mr Afzal said: “I worked in London for 20-odd years and saw that the Met Police is too big to manage.
“The next biggest force is the West Midlands or Greater Manchester – they are about 15% of the size of London.”
The result of its overcomplexity is that “no commissioner in the past 20 years to my knowledge has been able to finish their time in office,” Mr Afzal said.
He called for the force to be split into four regional divisions - which could cover North East, North West, South East and South West, plus the City of London. National responsibilities could be handed to the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Now in an interview with MyLondon, Mr Khan, who oversees the force, has said he is open to the idea.
Asked whether the structure of the Met Police needed an overhaul – with the Mayor able to appoint the force’s commissioner on his own – he said: “The current system isn’t working. We have a situation where the Home Secretary gives unconditional support to a Met Police commissioner who in my view is not addressing really crucial issues, about winning back trust and confidence.
“It’s me who lost confidence in [Dame Cressida Dick], which meant she had to step aside.”
Before the appointment of Sir Mark, the Mayor added: “Even now with the new commissioner, it’s the Home Secretary who appoints him – and she will have the ultimate power to hire and fire. The Home Secretary had no problems with the performance of the last commissioner, which Londoners find astonishing, as indeed do I.”
Pressed on whether the force should be broken up into local forces, and national responsibilities passed to another agency, Mr Khan added that while he had not formed a “final view” on splitting up the force, he added: “I’m definitely sympathetic to looking into this, yes.”
Sir Mark Rowley retired from policing in 2018 having served as the Met Police’s Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations.
After he retired he co-authored a counter-terrorism thriller, The Sleep of Reason, with a journalist.
While at the Met Police he was the UK’s national lead for counter terrorism policing, leading the force’s response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018.
Before his work at the Met Police he had been Chief Constable at Surrey Police.