Whenever politicians want to signal that they are about to shake up the system, one evocative word reliably surfaces: “bonfire” – of the quangos, of red tape, of targets. But it’s not often ministers are given the opportunity to literally set fire to years of hard work.
In 2009, at the tail-end of Gordon Brown’s premiership, Rachel Watson joined the Identity and Passport Service as chief of staff to the director general, where the key policy was the introduction of ID cards. At that point, the cards were being rolled out to foreign nationals and plans were in place to expand them to all British citizens by 2012. Watson had spent the first decade of her civil service career in comms, which was “really fun – it’s reactive, I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so there’s always something going on, some mini-crisis that you have to respond to. But I didn’t see it as my forever job”. The chief of staff role required someone who could do comms and build relationships – skills Watson had in spades.
“I absolutely loved it,” she says. “I loved getting things done, fixing things, and also the media focus – where are the dragons out there that I need to be prepared for?” A year later came the 2010 general election and with it one of the key moves the new coalition government could agree on right away: scrapping identity cards. “They actually burnt the database,” Watson recalls. “Good for them, by the way, that’s fine. That’s what governments do. But that’s a 180-degree turn [from] ‘they’re the best thing ever’ [to] ‘they’re terrible’ overnight because there’s an election, and I guess that’s the joy of the civil service.”
Naturally, officials had planned for the potential change of government. “Announcements had already been drafted, legislation had been drafted to abolish identity cards, we were all ready to go,” Watson recalls. “And it was just a question of putting it in place. “I’m not sure whose idea it was to burn the database. But the team came up very proactively with: this is how you abolish it, this is how you can announce it, here’s the legislation. I think incoming ministers were pleasantly surprised. And certainly when I’ve talked about my career… for quite a long time, that was a really good example of a massive change to deal with.”
Fast forward to 24 July, 2019. It’s Watson’s first day as policing director at the Home Office after five years as deputy, and she’s preparing for another change of prime minister and another big policy shift. “My first day in post was the same day as Boris Johnson’s as prime minister,” Watson recalls. “We shared our first few hundred days.” And although Johnson was only PM for three years, his plans for policing outlasted him. One of Johnson’s key policy priorities was recruiting 20,000 extra police officers, and Watson was the senior responsible officer for this programme. “Just over 20,000 ended up being recruited in just over three years, which was great,” she says. She also recalls there being a big focus on working closer with policing, whereas it “had been hands off in the early days of the coalition government. There was a big policy shift, and it was really exciting to be part of that”.
Now director general of the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Watson is embarking on a transformation programme of her own to improve the watchdog’s efficiency in the face of record caseloads and dwindling funding. We meet in April at 10 South Colonnade, the Canary Wharf government hub, the day before her two-year anniversary leading the organisation.
As the police complaints watchdog for England and Wales, the IOPC investigates the most serious and sensitive incidents and allegations involving the police. It receives referrals from police forces of complaints that meet a certain threshold – including serious misconduct, criminality or corruption, or serious injury or discrimination – and decides which it will investigate and which to send back to be investigated by the local police force. In 2018, the IOPC’s first year after replacing the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the watchdog received around 4,000 referrals. This year, it received more than 7,000 and was only able to investigate 317 of them – about one in 22, compared to one in six in 2018.
The increase in referrals followed high-profile cases such as those of Metropolitan Police officers Wayne Couzens – who murdered Sarah Everard – and serial rapist David Carrick. “I think [forces are] referring cases for the right reasons, they want to make sure we’ve got oversight,” Watson says. “My focus has been: let’s do as many investigations as we can while not compromising timeliness or quality. I’d like us to be able to do more, but we’re reliant on funding for that, although transformation can help to an extent.”
Watson on... being bold and forthright
The Fairfield review, which came out a few months before Watson was appointed as DG, said the IOPC should be “more forthright and bolder in defending its role in ensuring police accountability, its work and processes when it is justified in doing so”. “I’ve tried,” Watson says. “I tend to find we get a lot more traction when there’s a controversial case involving a firearms officer or something. Then everyone’s fascinated and wants to know. So actually in terms of being bold on your own terms, it’s a constant challenge to find ways. I did an op ed in The Times earlier this year. I was on Times Radio talking about the accountability system and what I thought needed to change in it. I once looked at the BBC front page, I think it was last year, and we were in every story on it. So we’re out there, but in this world, I think it’s quite difficult to set your own agenda completely.”
This means some referrals the IOPC would ideally like to investigate don’t make the cut, and are instead returned for local investigation. One such example is the case of a man who sustained a chipped tooth/facial injuries after officers used a significant amount of force on him before taking him into custody. He later became unresponsive in his cell and was transferred to hospital. The case was sent back for investigation by the relevant force’s professional standards department.
A more straightforward decision, Watson recalls, was the incident in March where Met Police officers accidentally left a bag of weapons outside London mayor Sadiq Khan’s house. “We didn’t take that [case] because, although it clearly has an impact on public confidence, actually the Met’s taking it very seriously,” she says. “It doesn’t seem like there’s any corruption involved or discrimination, it feels like a mess up. So that would be one that wouldn’t particularly benefit from having us all over it.”
The IOPC also undertakes reviews, which are triggered when a police force deals with a complaint but the complainant is dissatisfied with its outcome. If there’s an indication that misconduct could be involved, the IOPC will look into it. Like referrals, reviews have increased significantly, rising from 73 a month in 2020-21 to 290 in 2025-26. In that period, the average time taken to complete reviews soared from an average of 55 working days in 2020-21 to 119 in 2022-23. A backlog of more than a thousand cases built up as a result. The IOPC expects to achieve its target of completing reviews within an average of 50 working days by March 2027. “We’re now closing significantly more cases than come in each month,” Watson says. She adds that the watchdog is trialling the use of AI to help tackle the backlog, but notes this will be about “making life slightly easier” for reviewers rather than asking AI to “make decisions or do reviews”.
While the numbers of referrals and reviews have climbed, the IOPC’s funding has dropped in real terms by nearly 30% since 2018. Watson is under no illusion that any financial boost is on its way any time soon. “I know public finances are challenging at the moment so the cavalry is not coming,” she says. “So the question is: what can we do to make ourselves more efficient?”
Watson on... getting the independence-accountability balance right
“Actually, [the Home Office] is fine. They want us to be independent. It doesn’t help ministers to be making this kind of decision – I’ve never come across one who particularly wanted to. Where we’re less independent is money. We completely rely on the Home Office for that. But our funding isn’t conditional on any kind of decision making. We’re always going to be making quite difficult decisions that will very often displease either the police officer or the complainant or – in many, many cases – both. So the fact that we tend to get criticism pretty much equally from both sides, I think also shows that we’re probably getting that balance of independence pretty much right.”
One area with plenty of room for improvement is the timeliness of the investigations. In October, home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans for a review to address “systemic barriers to timeliness in the police misconduct system”. In January’s policing reform white paper, this was upgraded to a “root and branch review” that would “address more fundamental issues such as how cases are referred to the IOPC and the interaction between the misconduct, courts and coronial systems”. The white paper suggested there were opportunities to avoid duplication and “be clearer for the police and public alike”.
“I absolutely own that we need to speed up and our big focus is what is within our gift,” Watson says. “But there’s a lot of other bits of the system that are slow. My focus has been on the processes that we can control,” she says. Recently, the IOPC published new witness guidance designed to reduce delays in getting police witness statements and interviews. “That gives us the platform to say, these are the bits that need to speed up.”
Watson says the most dramatic step to improve the IOPC’s investigations processes since her arrival has been last year’s move from a regional to a national model. Under the previous structure, each office would deal with its own investigations. “We’ve swept that away,” she says. The watchdog’s Birmingham office may take on a case in Manchester if it has spare capacity, for example. Watson says the IOPC is now starting to see a month-on-month increase in performance on investigations, “which is really heartening”.
These reforms supported accelerated misconduct hearings for Charing Cross Police Station officers caught on camera making racist and misogynist remarks and revelling in the use of force in a BBC Panorama documentary that was broadcast in October 2025. The Met referred the case to the IOPC shortly before the programme aired, but the watchdog wasn’t able to see any of the footage in advance.
“We had to watch Panorama with everyone else, but… within a week of the broadcast, we sent all the paperwork to the Met so they could have accelerated misconduct hearings, which is when you know that there’s a really clear gross misconduct and rather than going through a full lengthy process, someone can be heard and dismissed. And these were clearly individuals who didn’t belong in policing so it was in the public interest that they were out of policing and not being paid by the taxpayer as soon as possible.” The hearings began within three weeks of the programme and have so far found 10 serving or former officers guilty of gross misconduct.
The IOPC’s vision – set out in big, bold letters on its website – is that “everyone is able to have trust and confidence in the police”.
“Often if someone comes into contact with the IOPC it might well be the worst day of their life, either as a complainant because perhaps they’ve been bereaved, something awful has happened, or they feel upset about treatment by the police; or if you’re a police officer, it’s blooming scary. And we’re acutely aware that that’s the case. So it’s really important that we give the best possible service to the complainant, and also the officer who’s under investigation… the output of that should be that people have confidence in the police system.”
For much of the public, their daily dose of policing comes from TV dramas and the news rather than in-person interactions. What impact does Watson think police procedurals and media coverage has on confidence? And does she watch police dramas herself? “Well, Line of Duty is great,” Watson says. “I’ve actually got a mug with AC-12, Rachel on it. It was a leaving gift from the Home Office. So I do watch police dramas. I don’t think they have a massive impact.”
News coverage, on the other hand, “definitely” has an impact on confidence, she says, alongside people’s experiences with their local police forces. “The key one is the absolutely tragic murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens. And we saw a big drop [in confidence], particularly in women and girls, as you’d expect after that. Again, David Carrick. People in this country are really fascinated by policing, the dramas, the real life, the reality shows, the news coverage. But what seems to have had a big impact has been the systemic things that have made people question whether they can really trust police officers.”
To help police forces overcome the systemic issues these cases raise, the IOPC publishes guidance and toolkits on areas such as race discrimination and violence against women and girls. But Watson says it is ultimately up to police forces to make changes, and she believes they have put in “a lot of work”.
Watson on... switching off
“I’ve got a 13-year-old son, and a husband and a rabbit, so spending time with them in various different combinations is how I switch off. One thing about having children is you get home and there is something else to talk about that’s not work. I love travelling when I can and reading completely brainless thrillers as well. Nothing intellectual, nothing that’s won the Booker Prize, but something that’s really fun.”
Watson says her decade at the Home Office’s policing directorate enabled her to understand the policing landscape and how the IOPC fits into it. One of her big priorities when she arrived was to reset relations with police chiefs. “It’s important we’re not seen as just on the side of the police, but it’s also important we can work with policing in a constructive way. Because we all ultimately want the same thing, which is for officers who shouldn’t be in uniform to be out of policing as quickly as they can be, and those who have maybe made a small mistake or possibly no mistake at all to be back doing their jobs as quickly as possible. And I think the relationships are really positive now.” Understanding the internal mechanics of the Home Office was also handy, she says, for the part of the job which requires lobbying for new legislation or extra money.
Understanding the police conduct legislative landscape is something else altogether. A 2024 independent review of the IOPC by Dr Gillian Fairfield, who chairs the Disclosure and Barring Service, said the legislation underpinning its work is “extremely complex and confusing” and that many stakeholders “do not fully understand how everything fits together or… the IOPC’s role and remit”.
“It’s horrifically complex, I’m afraid,” Watson says. The “root and branch” review of the condcut system should help, she adds. “Ideally, we’d simplify the legislation. In the absence of that, we’ve got to try to make things as simple as possible.
“Through transformation, we’re looking at how we can make the initial interaction with us make more sense.” But, she cautions, “You can’t oversimplify something that’s in its nature very, very complex.”