Stop and Search: West Midlands

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure as always to serve under you as Chair this afternoon, Ms Rees. It is also a pleasure to follow what I thought was a brilliant speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). I thank the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for securing this debate. She made some really important points about the value of stop and search and, like her, I am taking part in a Zoom scrutiny panel about stop and search at 5 pm. Those meetings bring local officers together with members of our communities, and play a very important role. I share the hon. Lady’s sentiment that long may that continue.

The hon. Lady and others are also right to send our thanks to the frontline officers who have to take the decisions around stop and search in real time, out on our streets. We should never lose sight of that. In facing someone who may be carrying an offensive weapon, officers very much put themselves at risk, and we pay tribute to them for their service. Like the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), my father is a retired police sergeant. I also have an uncle who is still serving on the frontline, so I am thinking of them and the support they need from us as they go about the work in our communities.

To be absolutely clear, Labour supports evidence-based and intelligence-based stop and search. I very much recognise that it can save lives. When stop and search is guided by those principles, it is a vital tool in halting acts of violent crime and in building trusted, consensus- led policing that is supported and trusted by all local communities.

The commissioner’s new police and crime plan, which we have heard so much about today, notes that only 25% to 30% of searches in the west midlands area resulted in any policing outcomes, which include cautions, arrests, drugs found and weapons seized. In only 3% of all searches did officers find an offensive weapon. Moreover, a freedom of information request released by West Midlands police this year showed that, of those stopped and searched per 1,000 of population, about 11 were black, eight of Asian heritage and three white.

The duty of any police and crime commissioner is to consider those statistics and to ask what the figures tell us about how stop and search is being used. Is it proportionate? Is it effective? Is it correct and is it prudent to assess whether the reasonable grounds threshold is being met in connection with the searches that take place?

In the commissioner’s new police and crime plan, he laid out three targets to make stop and search more effective. West Midlands police will aim, as we have discussed, to increase: the positive outcome rates for reasonable grounds stops and searches to no less than 50%; the proportion of reasonable grounds stops and searches where an offensive weapon is the object of the search; and the number of weapons found.

Despite what has been suggested, the commissioner has no plans to scale back stop and search, nor does he wish to abandon it entirely. Instead, he is thinking to create a more efficient policy. An effective policy will focus on taking more weapons off our streets, while we build in the community policing that became so difficult thanks to 10 years of austerity under this Government.

The commissioner is taking those steps because, in his constabulary and across the UK, the Government have made stop and search a less effective and trusted tool. The beating crime plan released by the Government in July 2021 permanently relaxed conditions for the use of section 60 stop-and-search powers, under which officers may search someone without reasonable grounds in some circumstances. That dismantled the best use of stop-and-search scheme, introduced by the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), in 2014, which introduced evidence and intelligence-based stop and search.

The hon. Member for West Bromwich East noted the increase in crime in her constituency and across the region. In the West Midlands police force area, crime is up. Specifically, instances of violence against the person and crimes recorded involving the possession of weapons rose from 111,934 in the year ending December 2020 to 137,549 in the year ending June 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics. Those are indeed somewhat shocking figures, and I appreciate the hon. Member’s efforts to raise the issue with the Minister today. The fact is, however, we are seeing increases in violent crime across the country.

In Cleveland, we saw an increase from 24,359 instances of violence against the person and crimes recorded involving the possession of weapons, to 25,360 in the year ending June 2021. The area covered by Cleveland police was the second worst place in the UK for knife crime in the year ending March 2021. According to the Office for National Statistics, proportionate to the population, the force area experienced more crimes involving bladed weapons than Greater Manchester police or London’s Metropolitan police. Between April 2020 and March 2021, 122 incidents of knife crime were recorded per 100,000 of the population. Indeed, only the West Midlands police recorded more, at 156.

More generally, the Office for National Statistics reported that between April 2009 and March 2010, 13 per 1,000 people were victims of violence against the person; and between July 2020 and June 2021, 32 people per 1,000 were victims of violence against the person. I am sure that all hon. Members will recognise that those increases are serious and I know that the hon. Member for West Bromwich East’s police and crime commissioner is keen to engage with her and all hon. Members about how we drive forward the effectiveness of the stop-and-search approach in order to address the systemic factors that have caused such a marked increase in crime, in not only the west midlands, but so many areas of the country.

Since 2010, West Midlands police has lost 2,221 of its officers as a consequence of the Government’s cuts, and we have lost 21,000 police officers nationally, as so many Members have said. The force is due to receive 1,200 back over the coming years, leaving West Midlands police with more than 1,000 missing officers. Since first coming to power in 2010, the Government have reduced the nationwide police budget by £1.6 billion in real terms. Since 2010, West Midlands police has lost spending power of £175 million.

I am afraid to say that the Conservatives’ negligent underfunding of our police forces means that the country is experiencing record levels of knife crime and that nearly nine in 10 cases are going unsolved, which has contributed to the stark increase in crime in the west midlands. There has been no levelling up when it comes to the West Midlands police and instead we have left our communities less safe.

Can the Minister update the House on when the long-overdue revised police funding formula might be ready? I understand that Simon Foster, the police and crime commissioner, recently wrote to all the region’s MPs on a cross-party basis to ask for a fair deal for West Midlands police. I hope that all hon. Members, as other hon. Members have said, will join his plea in that letter to the Government.

[Mike Wood]

As the hon. Lady said, there has been an increase in crime in the west midlands. For violence with injury, the number of offences in the west midlands was up 10% on the previous year. In her own police force area, it was down 5% on the previous year. What does she think that her police force is doing better than West Midlands police?

--- Later in debate ---

[Holly Lynch]

It is an interesting question. One size does not fit all when it comes to tackling knife crime, as the dynamics of it are different in different areas. It might be the approach to the use of weapons, unfortunately, in domestic violence or to gang crime, or it might be related to drugs. To suggest that one size fits all when it comes to tackling knife crime is misguided.

We need to look to violence reduction units, community partnerships, police officers, police forces and police and crime commissioners around the country to find out what the most effective tools are to address knife crime and violence and to truly drive it down. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has pointed to the great work done by West Yorkshire police. I share his sense that it is doing a fantastic job and I will pass that on to my local officers.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made a typically passionate contribution about how we have to take local communities with us on stop and search if we are to be truly effective, and about the devastating consequences of cuts to policing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) told us the story of his local police community support officers and the valuable work that they do to establish trust in communities. We should never lose sight of their contribution, which is valued by communities and policing alike. I come back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that the west midlands will still be 1,000 officers short by the time the Government have finished restoring the police officer numbers that they have cut since 2010.

I very much hope that we can have a productive discussion about how to improve stop and search. I am reassured that there is a great deal of consensus in the Chamber and a commitment to work with the police and crime commissioner to do that in the west midlands. It can be a vital tool in keeping our communities safe, but it must be driven by evidence and intelligence, and have public support, for it to be effective.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think that stop and search is the silver bullet for crime prevention. Although it can be incredibly effective as a last defence against violent crime, the Government must begin to tackle the systemic factors that have driven the increase in crime under their watch. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) made a point about police station closures. I have lost a police station in my constituency—

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Order. Could you bring your comments to a close, please?

[Holly Lynch]

I certainly will, Ms Rees. If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield thinks that those decisions are not based on the cuts imposed on police and crime commissioners and regional forces by the Conservative Government, he is mistaken. I hope that we can all make the case for well-funded police forces doing that work in our communities in future.