Stop and Search

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

There will be a place for responses to the consultation on the gov.uk website, but we intend also to hold a number of consultation meetings with people who are involved in the issue. Obviously, we want to speak with those who administer stop and search, as well as groups who have commented on it in the past, but I am sure that there will be opportunities to hear directly from people who have been subject to stop and search, as well as from communities about how they feel stop and search should be used in their community.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary will be aware that no single police activity causes more unhappiness and antagonism between the police and young black people than stop and search. That goes all the way back to the 1980s and the Brixton riots. Even after the 2011 riots, when I spoke to young people in Hackney about what triggered the riots, they said, “Stop and search.”

Will the Home Secretary join me in welcoming the work of Chief Superintendent Matthew Horne at Stoke Newington police station, who is responsible for the improved figures on the efficacy of stop and search in Hackney? Does she appreciate that it is not just that respectable young black men who get stopped on a weekly basis do not like it? What they object to is not the simple fact of being stopped and searched, but the way the police talk to them. There is a lot to be done in training. Stop and search is an important weapon for the police, but proper training should stop its being used in a way that is detrimental to community relations.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady rightly speaks from experience of an issue that I know she has spoken about on a number of occasions in the House, and I am happy to commend the work of the chief superintendent at Stoke Newington who has been working to ensure a different approach and those different figures in Hackney. She is also right—when I talk to police officers, they will often say it is how they do it as much as what they are doing that can be the issue for those who are being stopped and searched. That is why there is some very good practice across the country, and also good practice with communities, explaining why stop and search is being undertaken in a particular community at a particular time so that people understand it, rather than feeling that it is something that is just being done to them within the community.