Deaths in Custody (Black People)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

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

The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has hit on one very important issue—the pain that this matter causes among communities. Deaths in custody have been an issue in the east end of London for the 25-plus years I have been a Member of Parliament. A number of names come to mind—Trevor Monerville and Shiji Lapite, for example. A number of aspects of the issue of deaths in custody cause pain in communities, one of which is the disproportionate number of such deaths in the black and the Irish communities. Another is the briefing that has always gone on in the wake of a death in custody—that the dead person had drugs in their system, for example. Then, months later, the facts emerge and we find that the briefing was completely misleading.

There is no sadder thing—I have had to do it more times than I care to remember—than sitting with a woman who said goodbye to her son in the morning and later that night had a call from the police to say that he had died in their care. The hon. Member for Broxbourne is quite right that this is not an issue for any one community; it is an issue for the political class as a whole, which has not been prepared to listen to communities and families that remain in great pain—very often for years after these deaths happen.