Stop and Search

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department to make a statement on proposed changes to police stop-and-search powers.

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

The Government fully support the police in using their stop-and-search powers when they have lawful grounds to do so. This is a vital policing tool when used correctly. We will always ensure that police have the necessary powers to keep people safe, and that is why we work very closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to keep under review the stop-and-search powers that the police need to help keep the public safe. This House should be clear that we have no plans to change the requirement that reasonable grounds for suspicion are needed before a routine stop and search is carried out.

We are, however, working with the police, including the national police lead for stop and search, to see how we can reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency in the use of stop and search. The Home Secretary has been clear that that is something we are looking at, and that he will say more on this in due course.

The House will be aware that the Government introduced a comprehensive reform package for stop and search in 2014 in response to evidence that the power was not used fairly, effectively or, in some cases, lawfully. Since introducing those reforms, the arrest rate following a stop and search has risen to 17%—the highest since records began. As the Home Secretary has said, he wants police officers to feel confident, trusted and supported when they are using stop-and-search powers lawfully. If there are things getting in the way of them using those powers, these need to be looked at.

The Government are determined to do all they can to break the deadly and dreadful cycle of violence that devastates the lives of individuals, families and communities. That is why we will always look to ensure that the police have the powers they need and our support to use them lawfully.

[Afzal Khan]

We have all read the reports that suggest that the Home Secretary is pressing for greater use of stop-and-search powers and amending the grounds of reasonable suspicion that currently govern stop and search. Does the Minister agree that that is, in effect, a move to random stop and search not based on evidence? [Hon. Members: “No!”] Okay. Is the Minister aware that the current policy, which he wants to remove, was introduced by one of the Home Secretary’s predecessors, who is now Prime Minister, and that she made that reform of police stop-and-search powers based on evidence, not on chasing easy headlines? Has the Home Secretary bothered to examine that evidence?

The use of the stop-and-search scheme was announced by the then Home Secretary in a statement to Parliament on 30 April 2014. She stated that the principal aims of the scheme were to achieve greater transparency and community involvement in the use of stop-and-search powers, and to support a more intelligence-led approach, leading to better outcomes.

Is the Home Secretary aware of the very poor outcomes of the previous implementation of stop and search, and that the Home Office itself and the College of Policing, as well as Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, found that there were only 9% or 10% arrest rates from random stop and search? Does the Minister accept that this was a colossal waste of police resources? As a former police officer, I can tell him that that is the case. Is he aware that, according to his Department’s own research, black people are eight times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched, and Asian people are twice as likely?

Finally, intelligence-led stop and search does work. It is an important tool in the police arsenal. I am in favour of it. The Labour party is in favour of it. Random stop and search does not work, and the Minister has no evidence that it will. We do know, however, that it can poison community-police relations. Is he not trying to distract from the fact that knife crime is soaring under his Government, while they have cut 21,000 police officers?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. Unfortunately, this all starts from a false premise, which is newspaper speculation that is entirely wrong. I go back to my statement: this House should be clear that we have no plans to change the requirement that reasonable grounds for suspicion are needed before a routine stop and search is carried out. We are not going back to random stop and search, to use his words.

The hon. Gentleman set out eloquently the case for reform that this Government made on stop and search, which means that stop and search is now conducted in a totally transformed environment in terms of the transparency and accountability around it. We are now at record levels for the ratio between stop and arrest, so we are not going back to the bad old days when over 1.4 million people were stopped with only 8% or 9% of them arrested. That is not what this is about. This is about recognising that we now have a million fewer stops and searches than we did in 2009-10, and that we are—I think on a cross-party basis—absolutely determined to bear down on this horrendous spike in violent crime. We need to be sure that the police have the confidence to use the tools at their disposal, and stop and search is one of those tools. There is evidence that the police have lost some confidence in using it, and what the Home Secretary is setting out in his interviews and articles is his determination to restore that confidence and give the police confidence in the powers that they have. We can look at ways of reducing the bureaucracy and anything else that is getting in the way of that, but this is about trying to save lives.