With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on leadership in policing. The police perform a unique and vital role in our society. They enforce our laws, tackle those who break them, and keep the public safe. These are awesome responsibilities. The officers and staff who uphold them every day, at all levels, are owed our respect, admiration and thanks. At the same time, if forces are to serve their communities effectively, they must secure and retain the trust of those communities. But in recent years, that trust has come under strain. Creaking systems, outdated structures and a lack of central grip from previous Governments have meant that the police have struggled to consistently hit the high levels of performance that we rightly expect of them. Things have to change. That is why earlier this year, the Home Secretary announced the most significant police reforms in 200 years. Our plans will ensure that the right policing happens in the right place, building on the progress that we have already made on restoring neighbourhood policing and driving down serious threats such as knife crime, and creating a new model in which local policing protects our communities and national policing protects us all. The reform programme provides us with a generational opportunity to address the long-standing challenges that have hampered the police’s ability to provide a consistently world-class service to the public. One such challenge centres on the question of how we ensure that our forces have the strong, effective leadership that they need to meet the significant demands that are placed on them. It is a question that is rightly the subject of considerable parliamentary and public scrutiny, especially when things go wrong, as they have in the recent past. Equally, I want to emphasise that there are a great many outstanding officers and staff across the police service, including those in the highest ranks. When failings occur and the public are let down, they feel it more keenly than anyone. The reality is that leadership is about more than just individuals. It is about culture and standards, and about giving every member of the police workforce the support and skills that they need to flourish and become leaders themselves. We are not the first Government to grapple with this topic. Various tweaks have been made to the system over the years, yet the same concerns keep arising, whether they relate to culture, conduct or the retention and promotion of talent. As we roll out our reform programme, this is clearly an issue requiring close examination. That examination has now taken place in the form of an independent review commissioned by the Home Secretary last year. The police leadership commission was established last October and is co-chaired by two former Members of this House with extensive knowledge of policing: my noble Friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs. Together with the other members of the commission, they have carried out the most significant review of police leadership in recent times. Its findings and recommendations are published today. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert for the care and skill with which they have approached their task. I am grateful, too, to the other commission members, and all who have participated. There has been a particular emphasis on giving voice to those on the frontline, which is welcome and essential. The review’s report sets out a comprehensive and, in places, candid assessment of police leadership in England and Wales. While the commission found examples of excellent leadership and delivery, it also identified concerns around consistency, capability and culture, and the impact that shortcomings in those areas have on the service received by the public. To quote from the report, “the policing profession has not consistently had the excellent leadership it needs”. It was also clear that those on the frontline are not getting the consistent support they deserve, amid wide variations in approaches to leadership development. The commission highlights the critical importance of leadership to ensuring that policing is prepared for the challenges of the future while upholding the sacred principle of policing by consent, without fear or favour. It is also important to emphasise, as the report rightly does, that leadership must not be confined to the senior officer ranks. It can and does exist in all parts of the service. It should be nurtured at every stage of a policing career—for both officers and staff. The review’s findings are rightly unsparing, and I welcome its willingness to engage with difficult issues, because, as the report’s foreword states: “Fundamentally, this is about ensuring that the public receives the quality of policing to which they are entitled.” I will turn now to the review’s recommendations, of which there are 27 in total. They are ambitious in breadth and scale and, taken together, they make a compelling case for change. While it is right that we now take the time to consider them in full, we welcome the commission’s proposals and the intent behind them. In particular, we are actively looking at the recommendation to create a formal senior constable rank and at how this could be done. The commission also recommends a new professional digital passport for every individual in policing, and other measures to put stronger supporting structures in place around professional development and performance. These could in the future help to build a route to a licence to practise, which is a proposal we included in our police reform White Paper, as one way of raising standards and promoting a stronger culture of professional development. Other recommendations from the review include: a new police leadership fast stream; a new targeted direct entry scheme to fill specific gaps in policing, with a focus on leaders from professions with transferable skills; and a role for the forthcoming national police service in promoting ethical policing at national level. As I have said, we will consider all the report’s findings and recommendations carefully. I am certain that they will be of great assistance as we advance our police reform agenda. A full Government response will follow in due course. In the meantime, we are making progress on leadership-related measures designed to improve public confidence and police performance, such as a new senior appointments panel and reforms to promotion processes, alongside the wider work we are doing on restructuring, including the creation of the national police service, which will provide a single source of strategic leadership and a stronger set of national standards. I will finish where I started: by paying tribute to the thousands of men and women who work tirelessly every day to protect our communities from harm. From the officers and staff on the frontline and their colleagues performing essential roles behind the scenes to the chief constables they ultimately report to, I am grateful to them all. While the threats they must tackle are evolving all the time, what will never change is our commitment to the founding principles of British policing, which dictate that in this country we police by consent, and assert that the police are the public and the public are the police. To uphold these traditions while meeting the demands of modern crimefighting, we must ensure that our police forces are fair, open and meritocratic workplaces that are able to meet the high standards we rightly expect of those entrusted with keeping their fellow citizens safe and driven forward by strong, effective leadership at all levels. Reform on the scale required is no easy task, but working in partnership with policing and aided by the findings of this important report, I believe that we can and will succeed in making our police service stronger and our society safer. I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement and pay tribute to the noble Lords Herbert and Blunkett for producing such a timely and thoughtful report. The last year has done real damage to public confidence in police leadership. Of course, the report rightly recognises that there are many outstanding officers leading forces across the country, but the headlines that people remember tell a different story. From the shameful scenes surrounding the Maccabi Tel Aviv match to the heartbreaking murder of Henry Nowak, alongside too many other incidents, the public have been left asking a simple question: who is in charge? Leadership is not about managing decline or issuing guidance; it is about setting a culture and making it unmistakeably clear that the first duty of every police officer is to protect the public and uphold the law without fear, without favour and without distraction. The report gets to the heart of that when it says that police leaders must refuse to take sides and remain focused entirely on preventing crime, catching criminals and bringing offenders to justice. Culture starts at the top. If we want frontline policing to change, leadership must change first. What struck me most about the report was not simply its recommendations but the evidence behind them. This is not the work of critics looking in from the outside; it reflects what police officers themselves are saying. As the authors acknowledged in their letter to stakeholders, much of the evidence made for uncomfortable reading. Perhaps the most alarming finding is that only 13% of constables and just 17% of sergeants surveyed believed that they worked in a well-led and well-managed organisation. Think about that: more than four in five officers who put themselves in harm’s way to keep our streets safe do not believe that they work in a well-led organisation. If that does not ring alarm bells, I do not know what will. Time does not permit me to go through all 27 recommendations, but there is much that deserves support. In particular, I welcome the emphasis on merit. Our best officers should be recognised, developed and promoted because they are the best, not because they have ticked the right boxes. But we also have to be honest about the context. The report sits alongside a programme of wider police reform announced by the Government, although reports suggest that the incoming Prime Minister is already getting cold feet about those reforms. That matters, because many of the recommendations assume larger forces and more centralised models. If those reforms do not happen, Ministers need to explain how the recommendations will work in practice rather than simply in principle. There is another contradiction that cannot be ignored. If we want stronger leadership, we need to give police leaders the tools they need to succeed. That means enough officers on the streets and the technology to help them do their jobs effectively. Instead, officer numbers have fallen by about 1,300 across the country. At the same time, in London, the Labour mayor chose to pick a public fight with his own commissioner over the use of technology, with the commissioner making it clear that the mayor’s decision would leave the force able to achieve less. How can we demand better leadership while cutting officer numbers and denying forces the technology they say they need? There is much in the report that hon. Members on both sides of the House can support. Better leadership is not a partisan cause—it is a public necessity—but if we are serious about restoring confidence in policing, we cannot stop at identifying what police leaders should do differently; we also have to stop making political decisions that make their jobs harder. The public deserve better, our best officers deserve better, and the future of policing depends on us getting both police leadership and political leadership correct.

I thank the hon. Member for welcoming the report. I agree with some of what he said. He is right that it is not the work of critics looking in from the outside. The evidence base was developed through nine months of forensic work, talking to police across all levels within the force, meaning that this is a very honest assessment of the realities in which we find ourselves. As I said in my statement, police leadership has been a problem for some time. Inspections of police forces by His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services from 2023 to 2025 showed that not a single force had outstanding leadership. There are different leadership challenges across all our forces. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the public need to believe in the police and be confident in policing. The statistics on public confidence in policing have been worrying for some years now, and we must all look at them. The hon. Gentleman made the usual point about officer numbers, and I will make the usual point back: as he knows, the Conservative party cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but then put 12,000 of them behind desks. We are taking them away from desks and putting them on the frontline. We are also investing in technology. For example, the £75 million that I put into PoliceAI will transform the bureaucracy on which our police officers have to spend lots of their time, so that they can focus on the frontline. Overall, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s nice comments on the leadership review. The review has been incredibly important, and it is important that we have cross-party agreement about the need to improve leadership in policing.

I thank the Minister for her statement. I welcome the focus on police leadership, and look forward to reading the report in detail. I thank her for acknowledging that this Government are not the first to grapple with this issue. Those of us who have been around policing for a little while have seen lots of changes, whether police and crime commissioners, independent misconduct chairs, or the different entry routes that the Conservatives brought in and then went back on, and there is a real weariness about changes to these processes. Frontline officers want to know whether it will get easier to deliver on the priorities that they know the public have but that they do not really feel backed to deliver. Can she reassure the House that that will be at the centre—no matter what changes, well-intentioned though they might be, are made on the back of this report?

My hon. Friend is right. We have to be laser-focused on what will improve outcomes for the public and what will enable the police to do the job that we ask them to do. I do recommend that he reads the report—it is a very good read. At its heart, it says that we want our police to have sound judgment and common sense in their policing. We want them to be freed up to make the decisions that are commonsensical and the right thing to do. To do that, we have not only to strip away the bureaucracy and all the forms they have to fill in, but to ensure that they are trained to be the police officers we want them to be. How do we match that training with freeing up our police to get on and do the job that we all ask them to do in the first place?

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the noble Lords Blunkett and Herbert for the report, which is a welcome shining light on the challenges facing leadership in our police forces. I know at first hand from my constituency that police forces deal day in, day out with highly sensitive, dangerous and traumatic incidents. They keep us safe. It is deeply challenging work, and we are greatly indebted to them. That is why the findings of the report are so concerning. The report shows that officers are too often hampered by scarce resources, excessive bureaucracy and conduct processes, which leave them unable to focus on delivering for the public. The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a return to the proper community and neighbourhood policing that our constituents want. For that to happen, officers must be properly supported and equipped to tackle the many issues facing our communities. Will the Minister set out what plans the Government have to increase the numbers of bobbies on the beat? Even more concerning are the report’s findings on the inconsistent leadership standards across our police forces. The numerous instances of leaders falling short of the standards of integrity, honesty and professionalism expected of them—including in cases of cronyism, nepotism and abuses of power for sexual purpose—are appalling. It is clear that we need root-and-branch reform of the policing system, as the report calls for, to stamp out that bad behaviour, improve leadership and hold senior officers to the highest standard.

Taking those points in turn and working backwards, we are working with the Police Federation on data on police suicide. It is an area where there are some contested figures, and we are trying to rectify that so we have the right picture, as well as putting in place more comprehensive wellbeing support for officers and staff so that they can get support in the difficult jobs they are faced with. The hon. Member asked whether the review will directly inform our reform agenda and the legislation we pass—absolutely it will. It is a very important part of the learnings that we will take forward. The hon. Member points to nepotism and other challenges we have in policing. Hon. Members might have seen Lord Blunkett on the television yesterday talking about that. It is absolutely true, and many the reforms pointed to in the report that we will carefully consider are aimed at taking that away, whether through having a targeted direct entry scheme or the new rank of senior constable. A leadership fast stream has been recommended, which would be interesting to look at. I recommend that he looks at all those recommendations. On bobbies on the beat, we have already increased the number of police on our streets by well over 3,000. As the hon. Member might know, we have a target of 13,000 police by the end of this Parliament.

I am fully supportive of Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester. It is the first time I can say that about a chief constable since the 1970s. We have had chief constables who were mad—James Anderton, who carried out his prejudice against the gay community because he had a line to God—and who were bad—Peter Fahy, who refused to take action on Pakistani and Kashmiri rape gangs because he was frightened of damaging relationships, and Ian Hopkins, who made it more dangerous for police officers to go to crime scenes and into houses, because the computer system did not work and they did not know whether they were going into a dangerous situation. Over those years I have come to believe that the most important decision is getting the right person in the position of chief constable. I hope that the report the Minister has referred to, which I have not read, will lead to that; the chief constable is the most important person by far.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and congratulate him on his honesty in his description of his previous chiefs. There are on average fewer than three applicants for each chief constable job, which is frankly woeful, and many are filled by internal applicants. We do not have the pool of people going for these jobs that we want to see. We had already said that through the police reform programme we would set up a national body to help with recruitment, as well as giving the Home Secretary new powers to remove chief constables in extreme circumstances. There is a lot in this report about how we can improve the pipeline up to the chief constable level, but also how we can achieve a better system of promotion within the chief constable ranks and ensure that we get diversity of talent, so that we have—as we would want—a good cohort of people applying for every single job.

I call the Father of the House.

I am grateful to the Minister for the £100 million grant she has given to Lincolnshire police and the transformative extra £12 million a year. We have been campaigning for that for years and have averted 400 job losses. When the Government do something right, it is right that we should say thank you. However, she may want to say a word about our problem. We are losing our excellent police and crime commissioner, Marc Jones—she could perhaps say a nice word about him—and those powers will be transferred to the mayor, but we have the Lincolnshire police and Humberside Police, and Humberside Police, of course, straddles two mayoralties, so she has a problem. May I urge her, in any local reorganisation, not to do away with small police forces such as Lincolnshire, to concentrate on old-fashioned policing—not woke, not courses, not staff—and to try to avoid throwing too many chairs up in the air with boundary reorganisation?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words about the funding for Lincolnshire and join him in praising his PCC—and indeed all PCCs. We never had a problem with the model in terms of the individuals who held those posts; it is more the elected model that we do not think is right. As he will know, Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe is currently reviewing for us what the structures should be in a reformed police force that would sit between a national police service and local police areas; the local police areas will be absolutely key, and he will have some very interesting things to say about them. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked for policing not to be woke, not to have courses and so on. There is a lot to unpick in what we want our police to do. We want them to have the skills to make common-sense, good, practical decisions to catch criminals and keep us all safe. In order to achieve that, we must make sure that there is good training, but that has been lacking. There has been very little leadership training at any level in policing. In the Army, 15 years after leaving Sandhurst a colonel in charge of 1,500 people would have had on average 72 weeks of leadership development, whereas in that same time a chief super in the Met would have had two or three weeks tops. That cannot be right. We have to teach people to be the leaders that we need them to be.

I thank those in the police service for their work; their job is not easy and indeed can be very challenging. I also welcome the Minister’s response to the report published by the police leadership commission. However, it grieves me to say that it remains a shocking and disturbing fact that many children of my ethnic descent experience being over-policed and under-protected. A report released earlier this year by the Children’s Commissioner showed that black children are more likely than white children to be strip-searched. I do not want any child in my constituency or this country to experience unnecessary strip-searches, and I do not want black children to experience strip-searches disproportionately. We need only mention Child Q to be reminded of that awful situation. I recognise that the police data on that, and on those issues, is poor and that improved police leadership is very much needed, so how will the Government strategy address that?

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her constant championing of this issue. She is right. We said in our manifesto that we would look at the powers on children and strip-searching. We have that job still to do, and we will do it in this Parliament; I would be very happy to work with her on it. She is also right that in some areas we have seen some improvements; on stop and search, for example, we have seen significant improvements, but there is a lack of data and an inconsistency in some of the data; we are looking at whether we can improve that so that we have the right picture before us. The work the police leadership commission undertook involved a substantial amount of evidence from women and people from different ethnic minorities, who talked about their struggles within policing. We know that more people from different ethnic minority backgrounds leave at different stages, so there is a job to be done there, and that is highlighted in this report.

As the hon. Lady has said, the House owes considerable gratitude to their noble Lordships Blunkett and Herbert, but surely the problem is very well rehearsed: a lack of consistent, high-quality leadership within the police. Will she explore further the benefits of having within the police the structure of a professional officer corps? That has been regularly advocated, and we know that in the military it delivers outstanding leadership and leadership structures. Will she therefore bear in mind that there are many brilliant, very senior officers in the British military who would bring undoubted leadership skills to bear at the most senior levels within the police, including in future for the role of Metropolitan Police Commissioner?

I suspect that we are some way away from not having a warranted police officer as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner—but maybe we are not. We are open to looking at how to get some of our police leaders out on secondment in other, similar sectors, so that they can get some experience and then come back, and to looking at direct entry to the police force for people from similar roles. Many people in policing have different views about the correlation with the Army; as part of the review, there was some interesting work looking at what the Army does, and I recommend it to the right hon. Gentleman. The new rank of senior constable is interesting, as are the suggestions about very senior police roles. I urge him to read the report; although, as he says, some of these things are well known, there is a huge amount of nuance and detail that makes it well worth reading.

I thank the Minister for her statement and my local police officers for their work. Trust in policing is essential, but that trust and confidence has been tested too many times in recent years. Does the Minister agree that strong ethical leadership is fundamental to rebuilding public confidence in policing? Does she also agree that the police leadership commission report provides an important opportunity to ensure that officers at every level are better supported to deliver the high standards that the public rightly expect?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The report is really strong on the importance of good ethical policing so that we can reset our police leadership culture around high performance, cutting crime, keeping people safe and, on top of that, preparing for the challenges that lie ahead. As we know, the force has not been forward-looking enough in the equipment and training provided to tackle new forms of crime. In addition, we have a very young force: as of March last year, a third of our whole police cohort had been in the police for less than five years, so building experience through an ethical framework is important.

The report finds structural issues within police forces, with fragmented and inconsistent systems that do not make the most of our police talent. If an officer sees cronyism, nepotism and abuse of power around them, they will not have their future career at the top of their mind or trying to break through that system. Given the impending Government reorganisation, how will whichever Home Officer Ministers are in place under the new Prime Minister ensure that the proposed police reorganisation puts strong systems in place, so that there is effective police leadership and development and we break out of the situation that has developed?

The reform that we have set out more broadly, not just in today’s report, is uncontested in many ways—some aspects are contested, but others are not. There is cross-party and cross-policing agreement about setting up a national police service and on having a more hyper-local focus, ensuring that the public can expect that acquisitive crimes that go unsolved are responded to in the way that they expect. Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe’s current work—as the hon. Gentleman says, it will straddle the periods of two Prime Ministers—is looking at the layers between police forces. There are different ways to approach that issue and we are working through all of them, but I do not think that anyone would disagree with the fundamental premise that, if we do not reform policing, we will not end up with a force that can face the future in the way that we need it to.

I welcome the report and I put on record my respect for the senior leadership of Warwickshire police, with whom I have engaged. In the spirit of the comments by the Father of the House, I will say that the Conservative police and crime commissioner is a good man, with whom I have a good relationship regarding policing. Every senior police officer—indeed, every officer of any rank—that I have dealt with wants to be scrutinised and to work to the very highest of standards. Does the Minister agree that, since they want to serve the public in the best way possible, no police officer of any rank should fear the leadership improvements that are set out in the report?

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, because no police officer should fear that. The reforms suggested in the report are there to support officers and staff to move through the force in a way that gives them the skills and training that they need to do the job that we have asked them to do. That is at the core of what we are trying to do. In relation to his remarks about his Conservative police and crime commissioner, we made the difficult decision to remove police and crime commissioners—that was a hard thing for them to hear, for obvious reasons. They have consistently continued to work with me and the Home Office, to help with the reforms and to keep giving their ideas and time, and I am very grateful to them for that.

Does the Minister agree that a big part of the leadership malaise outlined in this report can be attributed to the lack of clarity from this place and the Government about what we expect of the police? While this report is welcome, the definition of police leadership in paragraph 90 runs to almost two pages. Does the Minister agree that, in essence, this is about two things? First, this is about cutting crime. Too often, the leadership of the police is focused on being all-purpose social workers trying to solve every problem in society, leading to the extraordinary situation in which social media is policed more aggressively than shoplifting or burglary. Secondly, this is about having officers’ backs. Too often, police officers fear acting, because they will be hung out to dry if they make the wrong call. I am afraid we saw exactly that this weekend in the extraordinary scenes at the Pride march, where there was explicit antisemitism and people directly attacking Jews while the police stood back and watched. We have to achieve a cultural change. Does the Minister agree with those objectives?

I agree. The police have a duty to police without fear or favour, and that needs to be absolute. Everybody is equal under the law. I suspect that over the years, political decisions might have been made that may have made that job harder for the police. However, I do not agree with the right hon. Member’s analysis of what good leadership is. There are many different ways to cut crime and have officers’ backs, so I would not say that he has hit the nail on the head. We expect our officers to cut crime and to keep people safe. We can all agree on that, because that is what we need people to do, but the question is about how we do that. How has leadership been so poor over the years that we are not achieving that outcome? It may be that decisions made in this place are partially to blame, but it cannot be right that, for example, out of 140,000 officers and many thousands more staff, only about 500 officers and staff will start a centrally delivered national leadership programme this year. We cannot be designing good leadership when we are not training people how to do it.

Page 39 of the report says that the college is hampered in its quest for reform by the constant attempts to try to reach consensus. In the light of that, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the governance of the national police service will be fit for purpose?

The national police service will set consistent standards and ensure that we have a national workforce strategy setting out exactly how many different people we need and in what roles. The report shows multiple areas where forces have a compliance culture and risk aversion—people do not want to speak out for fear of consequences, and there is a resistance to new ideas. All those things suggest a culture in which people are not being trained, supported or allowed to do the fundamental job that we ask them to do, which is to cut crime and keep people safe. The national police service will be able to set those standards at a national level and ensure that there is consistency across all the forces, rather than the current inconsistent approach.

A white man on a night out in Birmingham is assaulted by two black men. The police intervene and arrest the white man—the victim—and allow the two black lads to flee the scene. They then call the victim a “dick” and hit his head against a police car while they are sticking him in it. They then misrepresent what happened at the event, saying that it was a fight, when it was actually an assault. They say that absolutely nothing is wrong. The footage then goes viral, as ever, and the police are forced to change their tune—footage that the police actually tried to suppress. I have three simple questions for the Policing Minister. One, does she consider this to be another appalling incident of two-tier policing? Two, will she haul the acting chief constable of—

Order. Mr Jenrick, one question is normally enough, and I have given you the privilege of two. I call the Minister.

I was the only person to raise it. Millions of—

Order. Mr Jenrick, you know better.

There is no room in policing for anything other than for the police to do their job without fear or favour, and that involves treating everybody equally under the law. Where the police are trained, have good leadership and are given good support, we believe we can ensure better outcomes for the citizens we are all here to serve. That is the point of the leadership work that has been done over many months, and it is the point of our reform programme. Where things go wrong, of course we must shine a light on that, and a huge amount of work has been done over the past few years—for example, police wearing body-worn cameras, publishing that evidence so that people can see it for themselves, and being quicker to speak publicly about what has happened in certain incidents. Those are all important, transparent changes that we are making to our police, but ultimately we need to make sure we are trying to bring people together through reforms that give them the policing we all need.

Mr Vince, you have moved. No wonder it is so quiet in your usual part of the Chamber.

I think my hon. Friend would look very fine at this Dispatch Box. I hope he gets to be here and has the privilege I have had of being in this role. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to strip out all the bureaucracy and nonsense that the police have to deal with. All of us who have been out on response with police or been out with our neighbourhood police, or who have spent time with sergeants, know just how much bureaucracy, form-filling and time-wasting they face. We are trying to rip all of that away through reforms and technology so that the police can focus on cutting crime and keeping people safe, which is what they go into the force to do and what we all expect them to do. That is what I want to see, for the people of Harlow and people across the whole of this country.

Lords Blunkett and Herbert have done a good job, but I would counsel against introducing a new police rank when most large organisations are stripping ranks out and trying to compress their hierarchies. Does the Minister agree that the No. 1 thing that needs to be done is to improve the quality of top leadership? Their lordships made that point very clearly. In 1839, Captain Samuel Meredith of the Royal Navy was appointed as the first chief constable of Wiltshire. Will the Minister give some consideration to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) about allowing people from the armed forces and other uniformed services to aspire to top ranks within our police force? It would break down groupthink, and I think it would add a great deal—middle-grade senior people within the armed forces, in particular, would have a great deal to offer.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s last point, there is a suggestion of targeted direct entry schemes at those levels, so there is an opportunity for that. The Government have not yet properly reviewed this idea, but there is a compelling case for the new rank of senior constable. The vast majority of our police—about 113,000—are constables. It is often said that there are people who naturally step into leadership roles and perhaps never become sergeants. They fulfil that function, but are not sergeants. That gap has been recognised in the work that has been done, and we should look at it. There are far fewer people in the top rungs, and then we have this big cohort where there is no role other than constable. That is worth looking at.

Dorset is about to get its fourth chief constable in just eight years. While I wish Amanda Pearson well in her retirement, those I spoke to who were involved in the recruitment panel said that the only potential candidates were the deputy chief constables or the assistant chief constables. In a place like Dorset, we tend to get someone who is either internal or about to retire. In almost every case, there is only one candidate. Given that situation, how will the Minister look to introduce fresh ideas and a culture free from nepotism, bias and toxicity in such a small cohort, so that we can get the leadership that we need?

The hon. Lady speaks to one of the problems that I highlighted earlier, which is that in the main, fewer than three applicants apply for a chief constable role, and many such positions end up being filled by an internal candidate. It cannot be right, as she said, that in a force such as hers that position will only be filled by somebody internal or thinking about retiring. It is a brilliant job—challenging, yes, but brilliant, definitely—and we should have many people aspiring to it. I again thank all those who have contributed to this piece of work, including many people who have given much of their time to help, to support and to think these things through. There is much in this work that will help us get to a point where, as we would all want, multiple people want to apply when a chief officer role comes up.