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.