The Metropolitan Police has announced it will re-vet approximately 300 officers after an internal review revealed that thousands of officers and staff were recruited without proper background checks between 2013 and 2023. The review found that serial rapists, including David Carrick and Cliff Mitchell, remained in the force due to these failures.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood described the abandonment of vetting checks as 'a dereliction of the Met’s duty to keep London safe.' She has commissioned HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary to inspect the Met’s recruitment and vetting practices. The Met estimates that more than 5,000 officers and staff were recruited without the right checks, and it cannot confirm if pre-employment checks were carried out on around 17,000 individuals.
The review identified that 1,400 officers who should have been flagged by vetting remained in the force with police powers. Evidence showed that 131 officers committed criminal or misconduct offences, ranging from rape to drug offences and hate crimes. Among those who joined or stayed due to defective vetting was Cliff Mitchell, hired despite an unproven child rape allegation and later convicted of 10 counts of rape.
David Carrick, one of the UK's worst sex offenders, joined the Met in 2001 and passed vetting again in 2017 despite complaints. He was later jailed for 48 rapes and 85 offences in total. The Met blamed a 'highly pressurised environment' for the failings, noting that the pressure to recruit quickly under the government's police uplift programme contributed to the errors.
Assistant Commissioner Rachel Williams said the force has been honest about past shortcomings and has since strengthened hiring and vetting standards. Since Sir Mark Rowley became commissioner in 2022, 1,500 officers have been ousted from the force. The Met also found that five other police forces in England and Wales made similar vetting errors.
