Priti Patel 'sickened' by Charing Cross police behaviour

Home Secretary Priti Patel has said she was "appalled and sickened" by the behaviour of Metropolitan Police officers revealed in a report.

The officers mainly based at Charing Cross, in London, were found to have joked about rape, killing black children and beating their wives.

The Met said it was "deeply sorry", after the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published its findings.

But Ms Patel said the force had "problems" with its culture.

She told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that examples of "appalling conduct" by serving officers could not be dismissed as "one-off" incidents.

Asked if the Met was institutionally misogynist, she said it had "cultural and attitudinal" issues, suggesting a "failure of leadership in some quarters".

She did not rule out launching a major inquiry into policing, like the 1999 Macpherson report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, which labelled the Met "institutionally racist".

The home secretary said: "There are no excuses for the appalling behaviour and what we have seen in that IOPC report and it is quite clear there are cultural problems and issues in policing."

But, she added she wanted to "find out what was going on" through an existing, smaller scale launched after the murder of Sarah Everard by a Met Police officer, before deciding whether to go further.