They’re the redoubtable men and women who keep our legislature safe. But is the thin blue line around the Commons looking a little bigger these days? Mr S has done some digging and found a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the Metropolitan Police on fitness tests undertaken by the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit – the elite squad assigned to protect MPs.
The Met sent The Spectator figures which show that the number of officers failing their JRFT – job related fitness test – doubled between 2019 and 2022. According to the Police Single Operating Platform, 771 employees took tests in 2018, of which five failed – a rate of 0.6 per cent. By 2022 the annual number of officers taking the tests had increased to 810, with twice as many failures (10) or 1.2 per cent of those taking a JRFT.
According to the Met, ‘If the level obtained on the JRFT was “Below 5.4
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