Baroness Chakrabarti
Main Page: Baroness Chakrabarti (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Chakrabarti's debates with the Home Office
(2 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberTo ask Her Majesty’s Government when the Home Office will publish data on the use of stop and search powers for the year up to April 2021.
My Lords, as announced on GOV.UK on 25 October this year, data on the use of stop and search powers for the year to April 2021 will be published tomorrow.
I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for that. She, like others, will have read newspaper reports just last week conveying suspicions that the data had been suppressed because the police Bill is going through Parliament. Similarly, there are concerns about the Government’s consultation on the Nationality and Borders Bill, the results of which have not yet been published. Will the Minister publish that data as well, certainly before that Bill comes before your Lordships’ House?
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to correct some of the inaccurate claims. The first was that the delay was due to a record level of data, but that was a misrepresentation by journalists; actually, the Home Office needed additional time to quality assure more granular record-level data. Secondly, the decision for delaying the statistics for the PCSC Bill was made by the head of profession, in line with the code of practice for statistics, and was announced at the earliest possible point on GOV.UK.