Met police culture stops officers challenging their boss, says sleaze watchdog

THE Met Police's culture is discouraging officers from "challenging their boss", the head of the country's antisleaze watchdog warned today.

- David Bond and Rachael Burford

The intervention from Lord Jonathan Evans, chair of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, came as the force's commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, battles to restore its reputation after a series of scandals.

Lord Evans described the failings in the case of disgraced Pc David Carrick, who admitted multiple counts of rape, as "utterly awful" and "shocking", adding that it underlined the Met's major "cultural challenges".

"I sometimes have felt that the traditional, quite hierarchical command model of policing has not made it easy to speak up," said Lord Evans, a former director-general of MI5. "There is a sort of cultural inhibition about challenging your boss because that won't necessarily go well, and I'm not sure that's helpful."