Health secretary calls on West Midlands Police chief to resign by the end of the day

Streeting continued: “I genuinely thought that, having misled Parliament, that having misled the public, and having had one of his own local MPs — the home secretary — saying she had lost confidence in him, I honestly thought that anyone with integrity would at that point say, "I have to resign." And the fact he hasn't... I really think is a stain on his character that if he doesn’t act quickly, he won't be able to remove”.

WMP have been forced to apologise on two occasions for making inaccurate statements before a parliamentary committee, but has insisted there was “never any intention to mislead”.

The force wrongly claimed that members of the Jewish community backed the decision to ban Maccabi fans and, on Wednesday, apologised after it transpired that its intelligence report used to justify the ban referenced a fixture that never took place between Maccabi and West Ham United was, in fact, the result of the use of artificial intelligence software, despite previous denials.

Streeting continued: “We don't expect people in public service or public life to be perfect or infallible, and we know that people will make mistakes, but you do have to take responsibility for those mistakes.

"And when you failed so fundamentally that you've lost the confidence of the community you serve and the people that you report to, it really is time to go.”

He added: “I hope he does the right thing. I would be horrified if he's still in post by the end of the day”.

The health secretary went on to say that the episode justified the government’s upcoming legislation to abolish police and crime commissioners, which would ensure that Mahmood “and her successors in the years to come will be able to take action swiftly to deal with this”.

The power to dismiss Guildford currently resides with the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, Labour’s Simon Foster.

However, in public statements on Wednesday evening, he seemed to be resisting pressure to sack the WMP boss.

Referencing the preliminary findings of Cooke’s report outlined by Mahmood in the Commons, Foster said: "The letter is not the final HMICFRS report. It describes how the chief inspector's views may 'develop or change as more information is gathered.”

He added: "It is my statutory duty to hold the chief constable to account for the totality of policing in the West Midlands.

"In order to give all these issues full and proper consideration, I will be taking this matter to a meeting of my Accountability and Governance Board, held in public, on Tuesday 27 January 2026 and asking questions of the chief constable."

In the past, Foster has been critical of the prime minister when he expressed his opposition to the decision to ban fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv.

In a letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee in November, he said: “It is undeniable, that the prime minister’s intervention significantly increased the risks associated with the fixture, by not only criticising the decision, but also confusing who actually made the decision – it was not the police – and implying, that the decision was related to, or even motivated by, antisemitism.”

In an interview with the JC shortly after Foster’s remarks, Sir Keir Starmer said he “totally” rejected criticism from him, adding that it was “really important that we're clear that all fans should be able to go and see their team safely and be treated equally. And that is why I intervened, and it was important that I did intervene in this particular case.”