Public Order Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 14th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I beg of this House to support these amendments to make a sign to people that we have taken this Bill seriously and are not prepared to give the police these powers without very clear definitions and a reminder that they should be used only in circumstances where they genuinely need to stop without suspicion. I would also like the Minister to explain a single circumstance when it would be impossible to stop somebody without this, because I do not believe you would stop somebody unless you had some sort of suspicion.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest because I am going to follow the noble Lord in talking about young people. I am the president of the YMCA. A lot of those young people would have been caught up in the language the noble Lord referred to. I find it extraordinary.

When I was Bishop of Stepney, I was stopped and searched. The police officer who stopped me and searched my car asked me who I was. When I said that I was a bishop, he did not believe me. He then saw my dog collar and said, “Whoops”. The matter was of course taken up by the then leader of the city police. Thankfully, the gentleman acknowledged that it was him.

It is not just young people. It is not just black people. Your Lordships have heard the noble Lord, Lord Deben, telling us about his children. The power to stop and search somebody without a very clear definition gives me a lot of bother. I am a believer, and I love belief. The Bill says that the section of powers

“to stop and search without suspicion … applies if a police officer … reasonably believes”,

but how do you work that out? Was it in your head? Was it in your heart? Was it in the things you had read or seen on television? Friends, the word “belief” is so dangerous. The old “reasonable grounds for suspecting” is in there too. I would rather this section of the Bill did not exist.

I was on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. I am sorry to mention it because the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, is in her place. We went around the country, and people had been stopped and searched so many times when the police did not have reasonable grounds to suspect them yet believed they were about to commit a crime.

The Stephen Lawrence inquiry gives a definition of the grounds on which you can suspect. The Bill is about public order and, therefore, some of the exceptions that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, was talking about cannot be extended to it. Those are there, but they are not for this Bill. Do noble Lords seriously want a police officer to “reasonably believe” and then do it? How will you question that? They will simply say, “I believed it”. That cannot be good for a country of this kind.

I want noble Lords to read the Stephen Lawrence inquiry again—about the failures of the different ranks. Inspectors did not do too well during our inquiry. They are the de facto junior rank. I hear again that there are not many superintendents about. If the Bill is built on that, you need a much higher rank of police officer, not an inspector. If not many are about and this is what the Government want to do, increase the role of the chief superintendent to deliver this clause, which I think is unnecessary.

My dear friends, it is for those reasons: for the many young people of YMCA, and many like them who would have to think twice before going on a demonstration. For a country that believes that there is a right to protest—not a right to violence—you are really cutting them off. If the Minister really insists that this must go in, then the rank of a chief superintendent is a must. A police officer acting on the grounds of their beliefs, however reasonable they may be, is not a protection for the police officer or for the person being stopped and searched.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I lived in Notting Hill for many years, near All Saints Road, on the route of the carnival. During the carnival especially, it was a joy to often see police officers entering into the spirit and dancing. That was absolutely wonderful. We must not paint this one way or the other. But, more often than not, I saw examples, especially not during carnival, where stop and search was used in an incredibly provocative way. Having lived there for many years, I would say that there was no more socially divisive thing about policing than stop and search. I beg noble Lords to think very carefully about inflaming this position.

As I said, I met many police officers who behaved wonderfully, but there were and still are some who stop and search far too often and, as we have heard, it is on black people on the whole. If we want a socially cohesive society, we must not make laws that threaten and may undo that. I would really counsel caution about this. Anything that can help us not go too far, such as the amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, should be supported.

Public Order Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

No doubt many others wish to contribute. I finish where I started: this is about suspicionless stop and search, which in certain areas to do with serious violence or terrorism may be necessary. It cannot be necessary in a free and democratic society to have suspicionless stop and search for protest-related offences. This is overreach by the Government, and noble Lords should support my Motion as a further way to try to mitigate the impact of a clause that should not really be there in the first place.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I stand only to amplify what the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has said. Anybody who reads the Baroness Casey Review: Final Report will find it a great shock. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has tried to put her words very simply. Paragraph 10 in one of her recommendations says:

“The use of stop and search in London by the Met needs a fundamental reset.”


We cannot simply go back and say, “We’ve been doing it this way”. She goes on:

“The Met should establish a charter with Londoners on how and when stop and search is used, with an agreed rationale, and provide an annual account of its use by area, and by team undertaking stop and searches. Compliance with the charter should be measured independently, including the viewing of Body Worn Video footage. As a minimum, Met officers should be required to give their name, their shoulder number, the grounds for the stop and a receipt confirming the details of the stop.”


At the end of our Stephen Lawrence inquiry, we talked about stop and search. We said that stop and search should be retained because it is a useful tool for preventing crime, but we had a similar attitude and gave similar statements to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. John Grieve was tasked by the then commissioner of the Met to carry out work on how this could be done. There was a pilot. It worked, but of course some newspapers did not like it and saw it as bureaucracy that prevented the police’s work too much, and it was then stopped. This has now come home to roost. Had we sustained what was started by Sir Paul Condon, we would be in a very different place, but we are not. We have a review suggesting that what is in Motion A1 would be a good thing. I do not see how that could go wrong.

Finally, as I said in the last debate on this, if the Bill is about public order, we have extended stop and search beyond belief. People are protesting—let us say young people—about climate change, injustice and unfairness. There is really no need for it; I cannot see why they should be stopped and searched. Most of all, these protests are at the heart of being in a free society. Most of us did not want Clause 11 but, now that it is in there, these provisions would be a safeguard so that the extension of stop and search does not do greater damage and hurt to our young people, who really want to protest.

Remember when they left school for a day to protest about global warming. If you stopped and searched them because you believed there was a reason to do so, most parents would have been offended. I would have been. Stop and search has been extended in the Public Order Bill and not for the rest of crimes, which I would wholeheartedly support. In many ways this amendment would limit the abuse that could occur because we went for believing as opposed to having grounds to suspect.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill was always about political signals, not sensible policy. Finally, even signals must change. I respect the Minister, but others in the Home Office have been slow to respond to the concerns of the British public about abuses of broad police powers.

Much has happened and even more has been exposed since this Bill began its passage last May. Last July Wayne Couzens lost an appeal against a whole life sentence for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard while he was a serving police officer, after a purported stop and arrest for breach of lockdown laws in March 2021. Last month David Carrick was imprisoned for 30 years for an unrestrained 18-year campaign of rape and abuse while he was a serving police officer.

Also last month, YouGov reported that 51% of Londoners do not trust the Metropolitan Police very much or at all. Last week, as we have heard, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, called for a “fundamental reset” of the use of stop and search, which she said is

“currently deployed by the Met at the cost of legitimacy, trust and, therefore, consent.”

Just yesterday the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that nearly 3,000 children aged between eight and 17 had been strip-searched under stop and search powers between 2018 and 2022. Nearly 40% of them were black. Half of those strip searches had no appropriate adult present.

All this relates to the use and abuse of current police powers. Still, today we are being asked yet again to green-light new powers to stop and search peaceful protesters without even a reasonable suspicion of criminality. When trust in policing and the rule of law is in jeopardy, if this House does not exercise its constitutional duty to say “enough”—no more power without at least the modest statutory responsibilities set out in Motion A1 in the name of my noble friend Lord Coaker—what are we for?