Four in five allegations of sexual or domestic violence by police officers need reassessing, says Met chief – UK politics live

Key events

Labour has 40-point lead over Tories in London

Labour has its highest lead over the Conservative party since YouGov started tracking voting intention in the capital in 2010.

According to its latest poll of 1,051 it has a 40 point lead, putting it at 58% compared with Rishi Sunak’s party on 18%.

The mayoral election in 2021 saw a win for Sadiq Khan against a lacklustre campaign by Shaun Bailey, whose campaign was memorable for attending a party with Tory activists during a lockdown in 2020. No police action was taken.

One election model shows that the latest polls would leave the Conservative party with just nine seats in the capital. As recently as 2015 they won 27.

The only seat left standing in central London would be Chelsea and Fulham, the seat held by party chair Greg Hands. But in the words of Peter Snow, just a bit of fun.

A fairly bleak report from the investigative news website OpenDemocracy who have done a feature on the progress of the Conservative party’s 2019 election pledge that they would “end” rough sleeping by 2024.

The pandemic saw an “everyone-in” order to house homeless people in hotels during lockdowns. However that ended in 2021 and since then the number of people on the streets is rising, just over a year before the original deadline date.

They’ve got a quote from Bob Blackman, a Conservative MP who is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which is a tacit admission that the 2019 policy won’t be reached.

“At the moment, the figures are going in the wrong direction.

“We need to take urgent action now to get us back on track to achieve what we said we’d achieve,” he said.

Suella Braverman wins selection vote for new Fareham and Waterlooville seat

As we mentioned yesterday, Suella Braverman was facing a selection panel last night to be selected for the new Fareham and Waterlooville seat, as her current Fareham seat is being abolished under the new boundary review.

She and Flick Drummond, the Meon Valley MP whose seat is also being scrapped, gave speeches and took pre-submitted questions with Braverman winning.

With seats being abolished, there will be more contests like this – and that’s without some Conservative MPs not being automatically reselected by their own associations.

One of them is Julie Marson, who represents the home counties constituency of Hertford and Stortford – who according to Conservative Home sources lost by one vote on the constituency’s executive committee.

Marson will go to the wider membership later this month to see if they will back her.

Successive governments' mistakes have contributed to neglect of social housing tenants, says Michael Gove

The housing secretary, Michael Gove, has said that successive governments’ mistakes have contributed to the neglect of social housing tenants.

It follows the cases of Sheila Seleoane, who was revealed to have lain dead in her flat for two years before she was discovered, despite her neighbours repeatedly raising concerns; Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old who died of a respiratory condition because his family home in Rochdale was full of mould, and the Grenfell Tower disaster.

Gove said the government had taken more action to help those in social housing in the last 18 months than it had for “decades”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:

The thing that affected me most was the Grenfell fire. What the Grenfell inquiry in particular has subsequently brought to light were a chain of errors.

I’ve said, and am very happy to reiterate, that there were some mistakes and errors that were made not just by, actually, the coalition government but by governments before which contributed to social tenants not getting the support that they deserved and not having their voices heard.

I wouldn’t draw a linear connection between some of the changes that were made when the coalition government were … understandably keen to make sure that public spending was tightened. We can look back and we can consider what some of the consequences of that were.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said there were “sex offender cases” and “some serious violence cases” in the list of 161 officers with criminal convictions.

Rowley told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I think the current policy is too permissive and leaves too much ground for interpretation. There’s certainly some people when I looked at the list and thought, ‘Crikey, that’s not right.’”

Asked for examples he said “sex offender cases” and “some serious violence cases”.

He added: “The public would expect us to take a very tough line but I don’t think it should be a completely binary line. I think we’d all see that the kid who had cannabis at 15 in his pockets, it shouldn’t rule him out for his whole life.”

He said officers should be scrutinised even if they were not charged with a criminal offence, adding: “The issue for policing is to not get drawn into whether the only test is whether something reaches a criminal standard.

“We are involved in the criminal investigation, which other employers aren’t. So that case the CPS said didn’t merit a charge for domestic violence – that doesn’t mean we should assume therefore that there isn’t material in the file which still gives a level of concern which might need to lead to action.

“I think too often we haven’t done that and we saw that in the David Carrick case.”

Rowley: not enough 'leeway' to sack hundreds of officers needed

As mentioned, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has been on the airwaves this morning talking about his letter overnight further laying out problems inside the force.

He told BBC Radio 4 that he had not got the power to dismiss officers who were offenders or could be considered a danger to the public.

He said the force was under “police regulations” rather than “normal employment law”.

He said: “Those regulations over time have become byzantine and complex. So not having clear provision to dismiss people who have failed the re-vetting process is crazy.

“People will be shocked. Some of the people on that list of criminal convictions are people that the Met has sacked (and been reinstated).

“I think your listeners will be surprised to hear that the commissioner does not have the final say on his or her organisation.”

He agreed that the regulations had to change for necessary dismissals to take place and said the home secretary was carrying out a consultation.

Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley pledges to clean up force

Good morning from London, where Mark Rowley’s latest pledge to clean up the Metropolitan police leads the Maundy Thursday headlines.

The force’s commissioner said that it is facing its biggest corruption crisis since the 1970s as more evidence shows a mishandling of cases against serving officers.

An open letter by Rowley says that in four out of five cases involving officers who had faced allegations of sexual or domestic violence that “concerns remained”.

Officials had examined 1,131 claims, in which 78% of cases had concerns that remained. A total of 61% showed that further work was needed as there were “new or missed lines of inquiry”.

Only in a minority, 246, of cases were police chiefs happy that the right decisions had been made.

Rowley’s done a broadcast round on breakfast radio and TV shows, which I’ll bring you some lines from later on.

Meanwhile there was a corker of a story from the Times’ investigations team [paywall] late on Wednesday, as “red wall” Conservative MP Scott Benton was shown offering to help lobby for gambling investors.

In the register of interests for MPs, gambling firms can often be seen supplying hospitality at major sporting or music events to wine and dine MPs, as scrutiny of the industry has grown sharper in recent years.

The MP for Blackpool South offered to table parliamentary questions, leak a confidential policy document 48 hours before publication to undercover journalists posing as investors, and boasting of “easy access to ministers”.

Benton was suspended by the Conservative party late on Wednesday. He has said he has been in contact with the parliamentary standards commissioner.

“[I] contacted the Commons registrar and the parliamentary standards commissioner who clarified these rules for me and had no further contact with the company … I did this before being made aware that the company did not exist.”

Finally the fallout continues from Peter Murrell’s arrest yesterday, in connection with a police investigation in to SNP funding and finances over the usage of donations earmarked for an IndyRef2 campaign.

The former SNP chief executive’s wife is, of course, former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Officers spent most of the day at their home in Glasgow on Wednesday, even seen in the garden of the home appearing to dig part of it up. A blue tent was erected outside.

Sturgeon, a regular speaker at events, was due to speak at the Edinburgh Science Festival on Thurday night. However organisers have announced she will no longer be attending.

I’m sitting in for politics blog stalwart Andrew Sparrow this week, and you can get in touch with any comments or tips, either by emailing harry.taylor@guardian.co.uk or my DMs are open on Twitter where you can find me @HarryTaylr.

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