Streeting piles pressure on police chief to stand down

A senior cabinet minister has said it was "absolutely outrageous" that the chief constable of West Midlands Police (WMP) has not resigned after he "misled" parliament and the public.

- DAVID LYNCH

Health secretary Wes Streeting said it was "jaw-dropping" that Craig Guildford remained in his post after a highly critical preliminary review into how WMP handled the decision to ban Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv's fans from a match against Aston Villa in November.

Mr Guildford has resisted calls to resign, including from home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who said she no longer had confidence in his ability to do the job.

The power to sack Mr Guildford lies with WMP and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Simon Foster, who declined to do so on Wednesday as he awaits the outcome of a parliamentary inquiry into the matter.

The preliminary review by the policing watchdog into the force's intelligence gathering found "confirmation bias" influenced the decision to bar supporters of Maccabi from attending Villa Park in November last year.

Ahead of the review's publication, Mr Guildford had apologised for giving incorrect evidence about the controversy to MPs, including for information which was apparently prompted by an "AI hallucination" during a Google search.

Mr Streeting told the Press Association: "I find it jaw-dropping, actually, that having misled parliament and misled the public, the chief constable hasn't resigned. I find it even more extraordinary that, having lost the confidence of the home secretary, who is also one of his local MPs and still not resigned... I just find that absolutely outrageous.

"The police and crime commissioner is following the due process, but the home secretary is not sitting around. She's abolishing police and crime commissioners. She's going to change the law to give her and her successors the power to remove chief constables where they fail.