'Health and safety is stopping us doing our job', warns top police chief

Health and safety laws are getting in the way of the police doing their jobs properly, a Chief Constable warned.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, chief constable of Merseyside Police, said that officers faced contradictory pressures which could see them commended for bravery for taking risks which are forbidden under health and safety rules.

It was a "terrible irony" that ordinary members of the public are more able to intervene in some emergency situations than the police officers employed to protect them, he said.

Mr Hogan-Howe's comments follow the successful prosecution of the Metropolitan Police under health and safety law over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot after being mistaken for a suicide bomber.

He stressed he was not commenting on the circumstances of the de Menezes case, but warned that the use of health and safety as a "fallback" option to regulate police activities could cause problems.

"We are responsible through criminal law and civil law, we do have a police misconduct process," Mr Hogan-Howe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "To me, these are very adequate processes we should continue to use."

"Don't use the stop-gap of health and safety because it opens the door to many other dilemmas."

Mr Hogan-Howe said officers were increasingly "concerned about what the organisation - the police service - and also society expects of them."

He argued that they must retain the discretion to act with bravery in situations where it is required.

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"The definition of bravery to me is when someone knowingly takes a risk where they may get hurt and goes on and takes it," he said.

"That is an 'unreasonable risk'. Health and safety law says the police service and all emergency services should look at the risk and only if it is a reasonable risk, and they have all the precautions in place, take it."

"That seems to me to be a contradiction."

"Members of the public aren't covered by the same law, so we are faced with the terrible irony that in an emergency situation a police officer may have to turn to a member of the public and say 'You are not covered by the same law. You may want to take action', or the bystander leaps in while we are worrying about it."

He added: "It does appear at the moment that we award a medal and give a commendation if things go well, but if a police officer or member of the public gets hurt then there is a health and safety inquiry to see if somebody can be held to account, when the motive in the beginning was entirely the same."