Crime: Police Numbers

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The police will prioritise, and it is important that crimes are investigated. Locally, it is up to police to ensure that they are.

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

My Lords, the previous Home Secretary indicated that he would increase stop and search, saying that we needed to do so to reduce crime. If that is the case, how do the Government square the circle of their talking about reducing stop and search?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, some of the indiscriminate, random nature of stop and search in the past has been replaced by a move to a much more intelligence-led stop and search, so that people—particularly young people—do not feel that they will be stopped every time they leave the house because of the colour of their skin, as the noble Baroness has said to me in the past. When they go out, people need to know that the police are stopping them because there is an intelligence reason for doing so.