Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Mayor summoned to forum
SADIQ Khan has been formally instructed to appear before London Assembly policing figures to answer questions over his ousting of Met Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick or face up to three months in prison if he refuses to turn up.
London Assembly Members voted on Thursday to summons the Mayor of London to face scrutiny over his handling of the affair.
The motion – put forward by the Tories, who chair the Assembly’s policing committee – states that they will use their next meeting on November 16 to “put questions to invited guests on matters around the resignation of the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick.”
It adds that under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, the committee “requires the attendance of the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, in his capacity as the occupant of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, at the meeting of the Police and Crime Committee which will take place at 10am on 16 November 2022…to answer questions around his actions in relation to the resignation of the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.”
Former Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Tom Winsor led the recent Home Office review into the circumstances surrounding the departure of Dame Cressida Dick from the Met Police has also been instructed.
A Tory source told MyLondon: “Given the seriousness of the Winsor report’s findings, we believe a summons is necessary to ensure he attends and so the committee can scrutinise it.”
Susan Hall AM, Chairman of the Police and Crime Committee, said: “The Sir Tom Winsor review has raised important questions about the circumstances under which the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner stood down.
“The London Assembly Police and Crime Committee has statutory powers to summons the Mayor, which we have used for the first time today. We believe that given the seriousness of the review’s findings, the
Mayor needs to address the unanswered questions that have emerged. The public will rightly want to know what happened and what lessons need to be learned for the future.”
Dame Cressida dramatically quit from the role in February after Mr Khan made it clear that he had no confidence in her plans to reform the force.
According to his review this month of the circumstances surrounding her resignation, Dame Cressida “felt intimidated” into resigning as head of the Metropolitan Police and faced “political pressure” from the Mayor of London, following a string of racism and sexism scandals in the force, which the mayor felt had not been appropriately dealt with.
But Sadiq Khan disputed the findings, saying the report by the former boss of the police inspectorate was “clearly biased and ignores the facts”.
Dame Cressida Dick slammed the Mayor of London following the Winsor report’s publication, saying he gave her less than an hour to decide whether to step down from her role as police commiss i o n e r. D a m e Cressida Dick slammed the Mayor of London following the Winsor report’s publication, saying he gave her less than an hour to decide whether to step down from her role as police commissioner.
Her resignation came after Sadiq Khan rejected her handling of misogyny among police officers, primarily at Charing Cross police station. Earlier this year, a report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct revealed highly offensive language used on WhatsApp and in Facebook chats by officers from a now disbanded team based in Westminster.
The watchdog took the unusual step of publishing the messages in full, despite many of them being too offensive to print as part of mainstream news coverage, because it said it was important for the public to know. Officers made repeated jokes about rape, domestic violence, violent racism, and used homophobic language and derogatory terms for disabled people. One officer bragged about having sex with a sex worker he met while on duty.
Mr Khan put Dame Cressida “on notice” following the exposure of the messages, before eventually forcing her to resign by saying he had lost confidence in her leadership and she was “constructively dismissed” from her role as commissioner of the UK’s biggest police force.
Her removal from the force prompted deputy Met commissioner Sir Stephen House to write to the Home Secretary “expressing grave misgivings” that due process - the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person - had not been followed. Sir Mark Rowley has now taken over as the new commissioner this month.