Minister declines to say she has ‘confidence’ in West Midlands Police chiefs amid a resignation call following fan ban at Aston Villa v Macccabi Tel Aviv
A minister has declined to say whether she has “confidence” in West Midlands Police leaders, as the force’s chief constable faces a call to resign following the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban at Villa Park.
Policing minister Sarah Jones told the Commons it was “clear that mistakes” were made, when Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (Sag) moved to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from their side’s game against Aston Villa.
Conservative MP Nick Timothy used an urgent question to summon Ms Jones to the despatch box, and said he thought Chief Constable Craig Guildford “must go”.
He said he feared West Midlands Police used artificial intelligence (AI) to come to its conclusions, relying on a false narrative which involved a made-up game between the Israeli team and West Ham two years ago, in 2023.
He asked Ms Jones whether she believed the evidence which Mr Guildford, Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara and West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster gave to the Commons Home Affairs Committee at a meeting last week.
The West Suffolk MP also asked Ms Jones: “Does the chief constable retain her confidence as policing minister and the confidence of the Home Secretary (Shabana Mahmood)?”
He added: “The police are accused of fabricating evidence to justify a predetermined outcome demanded by Islamists.
“They’ve had weeks to defend themselves and failed to do so. This is fatal for public confidence in the police and in justice, and in my opinion, the chief constable must go.”
Ms Jones replied: “I don’t want to express a judgment here when we have a very thorough process, which is ongoing, about the evidence that was gathered in order to reach the conclusion that was reached in the case of the Villa match.”
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is looking into risk assessment advice provided to local Sags, and will hand its findings to Ms Mahmood by March 31 next year.
HMICFRS will also provide a specific update on the intelligence gathered by West Midlands Police and the way it was used, by the end of this year, the minister had earlier said.
She added: “I was also really clear that if it is the case that there is anything other than the highest standard in terms of what we would expect, that is a matter of profound concern.
“And it is also clear that mistakes have clearly been made in this process, not least the fictitious match that (Mr Timothy) referred to, so I want to get to the bottom of what happened.
“It’s also the case that I have been on record praising West Midlands Police for things they have done in the past, and I wouldn’t want to jump to those conclusions, but I do want to assure him that we will get to the bottom of this and we will act accordingly once we have that information.”
Ms Jones later said: “He asked whether I have confidence in the chief constable, which I was asked last week, and I’ll repeat that I have seen some very good work in the West Midlands across a range of issues, but we need to get to the bottom of this particular issue.”
Peter Prinsley, the Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, said that “at the heart of this is the question of the truth, and the question of whether the deliberation of the Sag at the Birmingham City Council was compromised or prejudiced”.
Ms Jones said there were “number of questions” the Government was considering, “from the starting point that those Sags were set up many years ago in a different context”.
She added: “It’s right that we look at the way that police intelligence, police information, is fed into those Sags.”
Lord John Mann, the Government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, told the Home Affairs select committee about part of the intelligence report, which referred to a match which Maccabi played against West Ham in the Europa Conference League on November 9 2023.
“That did not happen,” he said.
Mr Guildford admitted that part of the report was “completely wrong” and was “a result of some social media scraping that was done, and that is wrong”.
He added that despite the error, West Midlands Police stood by “the key tenets in the document”, and the error had “no material impact on that document”.
Mr O’Hara told the panel that some Jewish community representatives had said they did not want Maccabi fans to attend the match in Birmingham.
The Times reported over the weekend that he has now written to representatives of the community in Birmingham to apologise, and a spokesperson for West Midlands Police said “it was never the intention of the officer to imply that there were members of the Jewish community who had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans”.
