Liberty director joins IPCC
01 May 2003
The Home Secretary is trying to give the new Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) a credibility that all its predecessors have lacked by appointing known critics to top posts.
The IPPC was set up under the Police Reform Act 2002 and is described as "independent of the Government and the police" by the Home Office. This claim is has been the object of derision from community groups and the independence of the new body has already been questioned by the United Families and Friends Campaign (see Statewatch vol 12 no. 6).
The government recently appointed Nick Hardwick, previously head of the Refugee Council, to be the chair of the IPPC. Now they have appointed the former director of the civil rights group Liberty, John Wadham, to become the deputy chair. Wadham, has been an outspoken campaigner on issues such as anti-terrorist legislation, DNA databases and identity cards joined Liberty in 1990 as a legal officer before becoming its head eight years ago. He represented the former MI5 agent David Shayler from 1998 and in his role as director of Liberty has been critical of police failures. He felt that there will be no "conflict of interests" in his new job, adding that he had been "campaigning for a genuinely independent police complaints system for many years and I think it is right that I should take up this new post."
His fellow deputy chair is Claire Graham, a deputy district judge and university lecturer. The pair will take up their positions in September and the IPPC will replace the Police Complaints Authority in April 2004.
The IPCC has also announced the names of 15 commissioners who will be based in five regional offices in London, Newport, Leicester, Manchester and Leeds. They are: Ian Bynoe, John Crawley, Tom Davies, Mike Franklin, Gary Garland, Deborah Glass, Len Jackson, Nicholas Long, Laurence Lustgarten, Naseem Malik, Rebecca Marsh, Mehmuda Mian Pritchard, Amerdeep Somal and Nicola Williams, (short biographies are given at the IPCC website: www.ipcc.gov.uk). A former head of the Metropolitan police's Professional Standards Unit, Roy Clark, has been appointed director of investigations at the IPCC. Clark who was a deputy assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan police, helped set up the force's anti-corruption unit and was responsible for the internal investigation of complaints and allegations of misconduct, unethical behaviour, crime and corruption in London. He left the Metropolitan police in 2001 to become the chief executive of the Crimestoppers Trust.
The question of whether new faces will lead to an effective police complaints system is an open question as their powers remain limited. In particular the power to directly refer cases for criminal prosecution to the Crown Prosecution Service. They will also have to restore credibility to the organisation following the decision of the current Police Complaints Authority to ignore the recommendation of the McPherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence which said that officers who used racist language or conduct should usually be dismissed.
See United Families and Friends campaign "Complaints against the police: framework for a new system" (February 2001), website, http://www.uffc.org; IPCC press release 3.7.03; Guardian, 4.8.03