POLICE whistleblowers could be offered anonymity and immunity from prosecution if they uncover serious criminality, under new proposals from the Home Secretary.<\/p>\n
Theresa May (pictured) has launched a consultation on a number of suggestions to help protect police officers coming forward to report misconduct. In November, Mrs May set out plans to help protect whistleblowers from unfair disciplinary action.<\/p>\n
She also said she wanted to make it\u00a0clear that reprisals against whistleblowers will not be tolerated.<\/p>\n
Now she has made another set of longer-term recommendations, which she says will \u201cimprove the reporting routes available to police whistleblowers, and ensure those who do come forward are protected\u201d.<\/p>\n
Currently, officers can report concerns directly to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but the IPCC is then obliged to report these concerns to the individual\u2019s force.<\/p>\n
Mrs May wants to do away with this rule, allowing the IPCC to decide how the concerns are dealt with.<\/p>\n
She has also suggested that whistleblowers should be consulted over how their concerns are dealt with and receive feedback on progress.<\/p>\n
The consultation proposes considering whether whistleblowers could be \u201coffered a guarantee<\/p>\n
that their identity will be protected\u201d and whether they could be \u201coffered immunity from prosecution in return for information about serious criminality\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mrs May said that police officers and staff coming forward to report misconduct and malpractice is \u201ckey to ensuring the highest standards of integrity in the police\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Home Secretary has also proposed reforms to the police complaints system, allowing police and crime commissioners to lead on complaints in their area should they so wish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POLICE whistleblowers could be offered anonymity and immunity from prosecution if they uncover serious criminality, under new proposals from the Home Secretary. Theresa May (pictured) has launched a consultation on\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}