Breaking: Home Secretary says 'no confidence' in West Midlands Police Chief

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says she has 'no confidence' in West Midlands Police's Chief Constable Craig Guildford.

A 'damning' and 'devastating' report by the police watchdog has confirmed that police chiefs used 'confirmation bias' to justify banning away fans from Maccabi Tel Aviv for the November game against Aston Villa, the Home Secretary told the House of Commons this afternoon.

It is now widely expected that Chief Constable Guildford will be fired for multiple failures, though responsibility for that lies with Simon Foster, the police and crime commissioner who appointed him two years ago.

The urgent report, published today, by Sir Andy Cook, chief inspector of constabularies, highlighted damning failings.

READ MORE: West Midlands police chief 'faces axe' for 'misleading MPs' - live updates

“The interim report from Sir Andy is damning,” Mahmood said. “There is no other way to describe it.”

The report found West Midlands police overstated the threat posed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans while understating those posed to fans if they travelled to the area, she added.

They used 'confirmation bias', said Mahmood. Among the failings was that the force consulted with Muslim communities and mosques but not with Jewish community leaders before making the ban decision.

The force's reports of interactions with Dutch police over a previous Maccabi game in Amsterdam also had 'disquieting' factors, she said.

Some reports of violence by the Israeli fans were either 'exaggerated or untrue'.

But she told MPs that under the law she did not have the power to sack him — as this is down to the local police and crime commissioner.

MPs have called for Guildford to go and accused the force of giving a misleading account. They say that the force “retrospectively” gathered intelligence to justify the ban rather than basing it on genuine evidence at the time of the decision.

Birmingham City Council leader John Cotton has tweeted that Guildford needs to go to allow for a reset in confidence in the police for the city's residents.

On Wednesday morning Guildford had apologised to MPs after admitting false intelligence that contributed to the ban was generated by AI. He wrote to the home affairs committee to retract a previous explanation that “some social media scraping” was to blame for a fictitious match being referenced in the intelligence.

More follows.