Priti Patel criticises police groups

Vegan and pagan police groups are among more than 200 “staff networks” criticised for “distracting” officers from fighting crime in a report backed by Priti Patel.
The former home secretary said some of the so-called staff networks had blurred the lines between politics and policing as they campaigned on issues from veganism and climate change to Islamophobia and trans rights. The report by the think tank Policy Exchange, which is close to the Government, found the staff networks had “strayed well beyond the acceptable bounds of political impartiality required of those in policing.”
They included examples of groups which had criticised the police’s use of the term “Islamist” for Muslim extremists, linked up with an organisation that has called for the abolition of the Government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme and attacked trans critics like JK Rowling. In a foreword to the report, Ms Patel said it was “deeply concerning” that at a time when police chiefs complained of “strained resources,” many of the staff networks were engaging in “an unhealthy internal competition for attention and resources rather than pursuing a relentless focus on serving the public.”
The report found staff networks had grown by more than 83 per cent since 2010 including the Vegan Network at Cleveland Police, slated in 2022 as the country’s worst performing force, West Yorkshire Police’s Green Network set up “primarily to lobby” on policy and the National Police Pagan Association. Policy Exchange said the groups might have a “positive contribution” to make with some centred around nationality, religion including humanists and background such as Gypsy Roma but warned they risked being “a significant distraction from policing’s core mission” of keeping the public safe.
The think tank said this was particularly the case where the groups attempted to influence policy or the Government, citing the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) and the National LGBT+ Police Network. The NAMP had urged the Home Office to ditch terms such as Islamist or Jihadist, as it claimed these increased levels of Islamophobia, risked greater radicalisation and lowered trust and confidence. It suggested alternatives such as “anti-Western extremism.”
A spokesman for the National LGBT+ police network said: “We have conducted no political campaigns. Members up and down the country provide core policing services first and foremost. Secondary and in the main voluntary to this is the support to staff around welfare, wellbeing issues.”