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The report was commissioned by Home Secretary Priti Patel to establish the facts around the Met commissioner’s resignation in February. Winsor claims that Khan, through his chief of staff, gave Dick an ‘ultimatum’ on 10 February, adding:
If the commissioner did not attend a meeting and convince the mayor that her plan of 4 February 2022 would be improved, he would make a statement to the media. That statement would make clear that he no longer had trust and confidence in the commissioner, and that he intended to start the statutory process for her removal.
For his part, Khan has responded angrily to the report, describing the allegations made against him as ‘clearly biased’ and claiming they ‘ignore all the facts’. Winsor concludes that:
[Khan] failed to respect the dignity of the Commissioner as an individual, and as the holder of high public office… In this case, none of the statutory steps set out in section 48 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and summarised above were followed. The Commissioner was given a very short period in which to consider her position following that news. She was left in a position whereby she felt, even if others might have felt differently, that she had no option but to announce that she would step aside, in part to protect the Metropolitan Police itself.
The report also revealed that in the last formal conversation between Patel, Khan and Dick, the mayor said on 19 January that the Met ‘was in the strongest position it had been in since the start of his mayoralty’. Less than a month later and she was gone. It’s a cruel game, politics…
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