The Guardian, 11 December 2025
Metropolitan Police (Met) introduces a major change in its "Declarable associations policy" policy: from 11 December 2025. officials and staff must study membership, both present and earlier, to organisations that are hierarchical, secret membership and require common support. This is simply a novelty – so far, the list of specified connections was short and included contacts with convicted persons, erstwhile disqualified police officers or certain professional activities.
The most crucial component of this change is formal inclusion of Freemasonry in the directory of organisations whose membership must be reported. In practice, this means that officers must tell their superiors if they belong or belong to the Masonry. Met does not prohibit membership of specified organisations – simply requires transparency membership so that possible risks can be assessed.
The change is dictated by results internal consultationmore than 2,000 people from the Met attended. Around 66% of respondents claimed that membership of specified organisations negatively affects the perception of police impartialityand a akin percent believes that this besides affects public confidence. The surveyed most frequently indicated concerns about nepotism, mystery and possible conflicts of loyalty. There was no deficiency of opposition – any officers raised issues of privacy, human rights and the legality of specified a requirement.
Met points out that The nonsubjective is not to restrict individual freedomsbut Building public and interior trust and eliminating even appearances of conflict of interest. The decision is part of a broader improvement plan and a raising of standards in service (New Met for London), including increased supervision, more stringent verification and anti-corruption activities.
The Met authorities talked about a change with United Grand Lodge of England (centrally free-multure) and with organisations representing officers. The article does not state the views of these organisations in this circumstantial publication, but erstwhile media reports indicated that any of them opposed the work to disclose membership.
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