Outrage has been expressed on several occasions this year in the Lords about Mike Veale, who conducted a biased investigation of child sex allegations against Ted Heath, and was later forced to resign as a chief constable in the face of complaints of misconduct, which were upheld by an independent inquiry. Since August 2021 he has been awaiting a gross misconduct hearing, whose start has been inexplicably delayed.
This disgraceful saga came up in the Lords again on 21 December, following Veale’s appointment as chief executive officer with responsibility for holding the chief constable of Leicestershire to account for the performance of his force. So a police chief with a spotless record will now report to someone who has accusations of serious misconduct hanging over him.
Alistair Lexden asked: “What kind of system is it that permits a disgraced policeman awaiting a serious misconduct hearing to oversee the work of a police chief constable with an unspotted record?”
“What kind of system is it that permits a police and crime commissioner to announce a serious misconduct hearing and then delay it indefinitely, even though the law requires it to start within 100 days—saying recently and utterly bizarrely: ‘it is complicated, it is interwoven with other things and there is an order of things I cannot supersede’ “
“Is not a system that permits all this is a gravely defective system? Is it not scandalous that the Government have done nothing to fix the defects, despite repeated calls from across the House, with the Home Secretary even refusing to discuss these matters with a small cross-party group.”
In reply, the Lords Home Office Minister declared “ I will defend the system”, but was unable to explain why the gross abuses of the system which were the subject of discussion were not being tackled. He claimed that existing regulations and legal requirements are sufficient to deal with them. But plainly they are not.
