Shadow equalities minister declines to call for resignation of Hampshire police chief

Shadow equalities minister Claire Coutinho has declined to call for the resignation of the chief constable of Hampshire police over the death of Henry Nowak.

Asked if Alexis Boon should remain in his post during The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News, she said: “We think there should be a rapid review to look into the conduct of individual police officers, and everything that’s happened here, not a long inquiry, but something very quick to ascertain all the facts.

“Of course, there should be accountability, and that is part of the problem that you see with these policies, like the race action plan. Nobody is actually accountable for when things go wrong. You’ve got, like I said, in some of the cases of the race action plan activists who believe in defunding the police, really out there ideology.

“The Islamophobia definition that the government just created again, they brought in people with very, very radical ideology to create these definitions, policy action plans, whatever you want to call them. And actually, when things go wrong, none of those people are held accountable.

“In fact, the leadership of these organisations are often not held accountable, so that’s what you need to change. It’s one of the things that Kemi [Badenoch] set out this morning, is that you have to change the system to make sure this stuff stops happening, and that our leadership isn’t so vulnerable to these campaigning organisations.”

Pressed again on whether Boon should go, she said: “I think we need to do the rapid review first. That’s what the family has asked for.

“I think we should do that very quickly, but of course there should be accountability when there’s been wrongdoing.”

She also claimed that Reform UK have been trying to smear Badenoch on the issue: “What I’ve seen from Reform this week is trying to paint Kemi as someone who supported the Black Lives Matter movement, who has said on the occasion of what’s happened in the tragedy of Henry Nowak that white lives don’t matter. This is what they were trying to put out, and that is just something that I would very firmly push back on.

“And just to come back to the main point of what we do now, I think the focus at the moment this week has been far too much about political personalities, and actually what we need to do is focus on how do you root out this ideology. It’s not enough just to change some legislation. I do think we need to do that and reform parts of the Equality Act, but it’s not enough.

“Actually, what you’ve seen in the race action plan, which we talked about today, is it wasn’t the fact that there was legislation in place, it was the fact that the leadership absconded from their duty in handling this sensitive matter and handed the reins over to vocal activists who have very minority views, so there [are] problems when it comes to leadership and inserting these radical activists into decision-making that we need to fix.”