Victims of Met Police corruption, incompetence and malpractice tell Boris to ditch Cressida Dick

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A landmark panel of victims of police corruption, incompetence and malpractice today call for the head of Cressida Dick.

In a bombshell open letter to Boris Johnson, they said the disaster-prone Met commissioner should not be handed a two-year contract extension as expected.

Led by Stephen Lawrence’s trailblazing mother, Baroness Lawrence, and Lady Brittan, widow of Tory home secretary Leon Brittan, the signatories all give Dame Cressida a resounding vote of no confidence.

They also demand an overhaul of the Met’s senior team, ‘urgent and long overdue’ reform of the police complaints system and a shake-up of the ‘unfit for purpose’ Independent Office for Police Conduct.

The group call for an ‘urgent’ meeting with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Priti Patel to ‘ensure that meaningful reform is delivered within a reasonable timeframe’.

They say: ‘We share a collective concern that the leadership of the Metropolitan Police Service will continue to act as though they are above the law and that the general public do not have a viable means of recourse.’

The group of seven influential figures includes the son of D-Day hero Lord Bramall, BBC broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, the brother of axe murder victim Daniel Morgan, Edward Heath’s biographer Michael McManus and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

They drafted a joint statement after the Daily Mail invited them to an unprecedented debate on their own experiences of Met malpractice and corruption, and the effectiveness of the police complaints system.

Their extraordinary intervention follows a string of controversies and scandals that have engulfed Dame Cressida since she was appointed Scotland Yard chief on a five-year contract in 2017.

The group tell the Prime Minister: ‘Dame Cressida Dick, who has presided over a culture of incompetence and cover-up, must not have her contract extended and must be properly investigated for her conduct, along with her predecessors and those in her inner circle, who she appointed and who have questions to answer.

‘She should be replaced by an appointee from outside London, via a truly independent and transparent process.’

They say they write ‘as a group of concerned individuals seeking urgent and long overdue reform of policing, the police complaints system and, in particular, the Metropolitan Police Service’.

And they add: ‘Our stories and individual experiences are very different but we have all been victims of the incompetence and malpractice which pervades the leadership of the MPS. This includes racial discrimination, systemic corruption and the reckless and unjustified harassment of innocent people.

‘After decades of equivocation and inertia, we are calling for immediate and decisive action from your administration. We have – reluctantly – become public figures as a result of our experiences but we are determined to use our voice to push for reform. This is the only way to restore confidence in our capital’s police service, and to ensure that these injustices cannot be repeated.’ They say there ‘must be accountability’ in the police.

‘A system which allows the police to set the parameters of the inquiries into their own misconduct, as was and is the case after Operation Midland, is self-evidently broken,’ they write.

‘The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which is supposed to oversee complaints against the police, is demonstrably unfit for purpose as it is currently structured.

‘A functional governance system must be established, led by a credible and legally-trained individual, and they must be given the powers to investigate and hold the police services to account. The IOPC must themselves be properly accountable to the Home Secretary with an independent oversight mechanism.’

The widely-expected decision to give Dame Cressida a contract extension comes just weeks after a senior Government figure privately cast doubt on her prospects of staying in post following a string of controversies including her handling of the Operation Midland VIP child abuse inquiry scandal.

In June, Dame Cressida was engulfed in cover-up claims after an official £20million report branded the Met ‘institutionally corrupt’ and accused her of trying to thwart an inquiry into the unsolved axe murder of private eye Daniel Morgan.

His brother Alastair is one of the seven figures to sign today’s letter to the Prime Minister. Dame Cressida has rejected the key findings of the probe into the Morgan case, which has been mired in allegations of police corruption.

Last night the Home Office did not confirm Dame Cressida’s contract extension – saying the process was ‘ongoing’. Insiders said there was still some ‘procedural stuff’ to sign off before it was formally announced. Sources said there was concern about the lack of suitable replacements with one claiming it is ‘a case of better the devil you know’.

This claim caused bemusement in senior police circles with two well qualified chief constables understood to have been preparing to apply for the commissioner’s job. Moves to give Dame Cressida two more years in charge even prompted anger from within senior Met ranks. One highly influential figure who leads hundreds of officers told the Mail: ‘It’s an unbelievable disgrace – what on earth is going on?’

Asked to comment on whether Dame Cressida should get an extra term, Baroness Lawrence said: ‘I just think there’s been too many mistakes that she has made in her tenure as commissioner. She’s the first woman commissioner and that’s good for diversity but if you’re not doing your job properly then that should make no difference whatsoever.’

Lady Brittan, whose two homes were raided by Operation Midland detectives six weeks after her husband Leon died and received £100,000 in compensation from the Met for the bungled raids, said: ‘I’m not one to have personal grudges but I think that she’s the wrong person.

‘When you have an organisation that has had a certain amount of scandals, the leader has to be exceptionally good, exceptionally strong, exceptionally talented, exceptionally gifted.

‘You have to have a lot of integrity and you also have to be very clear about, if you’ve got to do unpleasant things, you do them. If you’re a really good leader, you don’t indulge in cover up.

‘When something horrible has gone wrong, they’re able to fall on their swords because that’s very often the decent thing to do, not an easy thing to do, and in our current political climate, it seems to be nobody falls on their swords.

‘She came in with very high hopes but it may be that just for this particular time she doesn’t have the skills that you need at this moment.’

Last month it was revealed that Dame Cressida was facing a potential misconduct probe over her open support of one of her most controversial senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Horne, who could stand trial over alleged data breaches.

It was announced that the embattled Scotland Yard chief has been referred to the police watchdog over her ‘public comments and alleged actions’ in relation to Mr Horne.

Away from ‘cover-up’ controversies, Dame Cressida has also been under fire over her force’s woeful security operation at the Euro 2020 final at Wembley this summer.

Despite widespread condemnation of police tactics, she has backed her officers to the hilt and tried to deflect blame for the fiasco. The Met was also condemned this year over its policing of a vigil for murder victim Sarah Everard. Officers moved in and made arrests citing coronavirus restrictions.

How can their voice be ignored? From Baroness Lawrence to the wife of Leon Brittan and the son of war hero Lord Bramall, our distinguished panel – all betrayed by police failures

Fury of Home Secretary’s wife 

Lady Brittan’s husband Leon was falsely accused of rape and murder by serial fantasists. Her two homes were raided by the Met’s Operation Midland detectives over the lies of Carl ‘Nick’ Beech, six weeks after her husband, a Tory former home secretary, died in 2015.

‘I’m actually quite interested in leadership and I think there is a difference between the way women lead and the way men lead organisations,’ she said. ‘But nonetheless, the principles are the same. Firstly, you cannot seek popularity. You have to have integrity. You have to have clarity of vision and if there’s anything wrong with your organisation, you have to do your best to put it right.

‘The thing I would say about the police is that they are essentially an arm of our legal system. Therefore that standard should be even higher, even less corrupt, with greater integrity and we come back also to the fact they’re unaccountable. You have to have a leader in these circumstances, particularly where we’re looking at a number of what we think to be miscarriages of justice. The current commissioner is probably part of the problem and not necessarily the solution. I just don’t think she has the correct set of skills to do what is needed to do with the senior police force for us to have a great, respected reputation around the world.

‘I’m sure it still thinks it has but they are the example bearers to the members of the public, who have to believe in trust in the police because they have so much power. And therefore, when you have a lot of power, you have to be doubly sensitive about how you exercise that power. And all we see is this culture of cover-up. They put their personal and organisational objectives before the pursuit of justice and the protection of the public.’

BBC star who won £250k Payout

Paul Gambaccini was arrested over false sex abuse allegations in 2013 and spent a year on bail before the case was dropped by then Met assistant commissioner Dick’s Yewtree detectives. In an out-of-court settlement last year, the Met agreed to pay him £250,000 over privacy breaches.

‘The contract of Dame Cressida Dick must not be renewed,’ he said. ‘I do hope that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary would show the courage of their predecessor Theresa May in dealing with the bully. She’s the only politician of either party this century who’s disciplined the police. And it is up to Boris Johnson and Priti Patel to show that they have the courage of Theresa May.

‘How can Dame Cressida say she is ‘a woman of honour’ when she was gold commander for Jean Charles de Menezes? You would have thought that would be a promotion-preventing debacle. For most people the past catches up with them. She is long past the point where her past should have caught up with her.

‘Operations Midland and most of Yewtree are a complete sadistic and stupid fiasco. So we must ask the Prime Minister and Home Secretary to reform the police because it refuses to reform itself.

‘And we must ask them to not renew the contract of Cressida Dick. Both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary know about my feelings because I’ve spoken to them about it in their previous jobs. They can’t plead ignorance. They must act.’

Son of a wronged D-day veteran

Nick Bramall’s father, Lord Bramall, a D-Day hero and former head of the armed forces, was in his 90s when his home was raided by 20 Met detectives investigating Carl Beech’s VIP abuse lies. The field marshal was later twice interviewed under caution by a detective, who asked him ridiculous questions. Dame Cressida sanctioned the launch of Operation Midland in 2014 when an assistant commissioner and has been widely criticised over her response to an inquiry into the ‘Nick’ scandal.

‘Most people are responsible for their actions,’ he said. ‘Operation Midland was a complete fiasco and my biggest complaint is that nobody has been held responsible at all, not even a smack on the wrist. And that cannot be right. I mean, this was a disaster. It put good people through a very severe ordeal, you know, to be accused of child abuse, rape – in Harvey Proctor’s case, murder – I mean, it’s outrageous. And you know, no one’s put their hands up and they bloody well should have done.

‘Cressida Dick’s name seems to crop up with every sort of disaster that happens, so she’s very much at the forefront of this. Someone should be bought to book and they should come clean. They had an internal investigation whitewashed the whole thing, it’s not good enough.

‘I often said to Dad ‘What would you have done in this situation? And he said ‘I would have made it my business, if I was head of the Met, to get to grips with this. I would have asked all the right questions, I would have made it my business properly to come down and see those people involved, on the quiet’. I think he would have been much more proactive.

‘His overriding impression of the police was he couldn’t really believe that they had been quite so stupid. Whether they were also corrupt is another matter. This was a really appalling thing to put people through. You can’t be accused of anything worse in life really, than being accused of abuse, murder, rape, buggery. I mean, it’s terrible.

‘If my dad had overseen this as Met chief he would definitely have resigned. He was a man of honour. If he’d been shown to be incompetent or falling down on the job he would have put his hands up because he was of that generation.’

The campaigning peer and mother

Baroness Lawrence’s son Stephen, 18, was murdered by racist thugs in south-east London in 1993. Despite the initial police investigation being riddled with allegations of serious misconduct and gross incompetence – and a public inquiry branding Scotland Yard ‘institutionally racist’ – not one officer has been held to account. Baroness Lawrence is unhappy that Dame Cressida closed her son’s murder inquiry last summer and is also critical of the Met’s stop and search strategies.

‘If you were to look at where we are now, nothing much has changed,’ she said. ‘We sit around the table talking about individual cases, what people have gone through and it’s like they have never learned their lessons. It continues to happen and it will continue to happen. It’s like we’re seen as – I wouldn’t say pawns – but we’re irrelevant in the whole thing. The police decide they have a line that they’re going to go down or not go down and then that’s it, and we all should accept it. The difficulty is that they don’t accept responsibility when something goes wrong. And I think if you can accept responsibility, then you stand a greater chance of not doing it again, or even trying to put it right. But they never accept responsibility, always blame the victims, for whatever wrong has happened.

‘Back in Stephen’s case they talk about one bad apple. It’s more than one bad apple in the barrel. And there’s nobody holding them to account. Accountability: that is what needs to happen and until we have that we’re going to continue having the same thing as around Stephen’s case.

It’s been going on for 28 years and there’s still more that could come out but will it ever? I don’t know if it’s the Mayor of London – whoever it is that needs to look seriously around Cressida Dick. I just think there’s been too many mistakes that she has made in her tenure as commissioner. And even going back. There’s so many mistakes. She’s the first woman commissioner. That’s good for diversity, but if you’re not doing your job properly then that should make no difference whatsoever.’

Brother of axe murder victim

Alastair Morgan has fought a marathon battle for police accountability since his private eye brother Daniel Morgan was murdered with an axe in 1987. The unsolved case has been engulfed with allegations of police malpractice and cover-ups. A £20 million report damned the Metropolitan Police and Cressida Dick. She rejected its findings of institutional corruption.

‘Many people in authority are very, very naïve about the police,’ he said. ‘Unless you’ve actually dealt with them yourself you just cannot believe how stupid they can be, or how obstructive, or how pigheaded. There’s a kind of gruesome idiocy in their manner and the way they do things. It’s just so patently idiotic.

‘You wonder what the point of the report was if it’s going to have that reaction? And then what about the next report? And the next one? It’s just undermining the foundations of our society to rubbish it like that.

‘That took eight years to produce that report against all opposition from the Metropolitan Police who were putting obstacles in its way at every step.

‘I don’t think Cressida Dick is in a position of any kind of credibility. It’s got to go to the Prime Minister. Whether there is the will to do anything about this is another matter.’

Aide to ‘vilified’ former tory PM

Michael McManus worked as a parliamentary private secretary to Ted Heath and has written a respected biography of the Tory prime minister. He has been an outspoken critic of Scotland Yard’s Operation Midland and Wiltshire Police’s Operation Conifer, which investigated false allegations of VIP abuse and murder against Heath.

‘There was this unilateral change of the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty,’ he said. ‘It began badly with an appeal for victims outside Ted Heath’s house. He was dead. He had no family and it was up to us, those of us who had known him. What was being said about him wasn’t even possible in terms of his diary, the way he lived and there was absolutely no evidence. But you had a campaign by the police – it wasn’t an investigation – it was a campaign to vilify him, actively vilify him, led by the chief constable.

‘It’s about accountability. If you’re not allowed to open the windows, fresh air will never get in. I see no reason why we should accept that the Met is forever going to be lions led by donkeys because that’s what it is at the moment and there’s no reason to accept that. To my mind, nothing has changed.’