The Metropolitan police have chosen to defend themselves - not the public

The Illusion of Reform

The police, whose job is to protect the public, had protected themselves instead.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s “bad apple” defence became a familiar reflex. During my years as leader of the Women’s Equality Party, I led campaigns calling for a radical overhaul of policing in Britain that denies, minimises, deflects, and protects the institution at all costs.

It took 18 years from the Scarman Report in 1981 to the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence to call out the institutional racism faced by Black communities. Last month’s BBC Panorama investigation into Charing Cross police station exposed the same rot: officers filmed calling for immigrants to be shot, mocking rape victims, and trading racist, misogynistic jokes.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner admitted that prejudice has “put down deep roots.” This confirmed that denial, not ignorance, is the force’s default setting. Barely two years after the Casey Review, the illusion of reform could not be clearer.

This problem is woven through Britain’s public life. The same pattern repeats across publicly funded bodies. Harm is caused and then denied while survivors and families fight for decades to be believed.

The Church of England’s recent reckoning over the painful John Smyth’s abuse scandal, resulting in the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, exposed the same silence and complicity that have haunted so many other institutions.

Former Anglican archdeacon, Mina Smallman, whose daughters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered in 2020, spoke powerfully about how police officers desecrated the scene and mocked their deaths.

Her courage has laid bare the intertwined racism, misogyny, and callousness that thrive when institutions protect themselves instead of the people they serve. Reviews are launched, lessons are promised, trust is shattered and the cycle repeats while reports gather dust and the next scandal brews.

We call this process reform, but we apologise without changing and investigate without healing. Preferring control over relationships, we focus on procedures rather than people, on risk management rather than truth. Our processes fail to address the emotional and moral damage that institutional betrayal inflicts.

It does not have to be this way. A growing movement of survivors, legal experts, and community leaders is pushing for a different model of accountability, one that treats truth and repair as public duties. I am part of the Coalition for Institutional Accountability. Our blueprint for change lies in our white paper From Harm to Healing.

We are calling for an Independent Office for Institutional Accountability, a statutory body with the power to investigate institutional harm across sectors, co-led by survivors and independent of government or agency control. Its job? To ensure that public institutions face the truth, make amends, and act to prevent further harm.

The Nolan Principles of Public Life speak of integrity and accountability but say nothing about acknowledgement or apology. Every public servant should have a duty to face harm honestly, apologise sincerely, and prevent its recurrence.

Polling shows that most Britons agree - survivors must be involved in deciding how institutions respond to harm. Prevention over punishment matters because the public is tired of the illusion of reform.

Denial is not neutral. It is a choice that compounds harm and corrodes democracy. Every time an institution defends itself rather than face what it has done, it teaches the public that power matters more than justice. It tells victims that their suffering must be managed, not repaired. Public trust, once lost, is not easily recovered.

Britain cannot afford another generation of inquiries that reopen wounds without healing them. True accountability is not about punishment. It is about courage: to face harm, to make amends, to rebuild trust from the truth up. Until we accept that, reform remains an illusion.

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Mandu Reid is the Former Leader of the UK Women’s Equality Party.

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