Stop-and-Search

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

There are two elements of the extra community involvement that we are introducing. One is the requirement that forces will have policies at local level to enable members of the community to apply to go out on patrol with them, so that they can see what is happening and can comment on that. The other is the new community trigger in relation to complaints. We will work with forces to ensure that there is a process, such that if there has been a considerable number of complaints about the use of stop-and-search in an area, the police will need to engage with the community about it.

I want to see what is anyway supposed, under the code of practice, to be there, which is that police forces are working with their communities—talking to them about where particular powers are used, and explaining how those powers are targeted—so that police forces can get community buy-in from the very start.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Home Secretary’s comments are very welcome. One of the big issues in my constituency and around the country is not the number of stop-and-searches, but the manner in which officers conduct them. I hope that the training will take into account schemes such as a “changing places” scheme that has been pioneered in Hackney. She has talked about the proposals being taken up voluntarily, and I hear her argument about that being quicker in the short term, but will she tell us how many forces have said that they will sign up?

[Mrs May]

In response to the hon. Lady’s last point, as I said in my statement, the Metropolitan police has signed up and I have written to every other force asking them to sign up. The police and crime commissioners in the major metropolitan areas, where the power is likely to be used to a significant extent, are of course Labour police and crime commissioners, and I entirely trust that Labour Front Benchers will encourage them to adopt such processes.