Macpherson Report: 20th Anniversary

Nick Hurd Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) speaks with a directness and passion that I have grown to respect, and I congratulate him, and the Backbench Business Committee, on securing the time for this debate.

The debate connects us on a human level with the night of 22 April 1993 and a young black boy, 18 years old, standing at a bus stop in south-east London dreaming of being an architect murdered, apparently for the colour of his skin, with no provocation at all. It connects us with the story of an extraordinary family, Baroness and Dr Lawrence, and their journey from that point over so many years to pursue the truth, to pursue accountability and to pursue justice, not just for Stephen but for all victims of racism, and the extraordinary journey from 1993 to January 2012 when Gary Dobson and David Norris were finally tried and found guilty of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.

I join all Members of Parliament who have spoken and expressed their admiration for the family, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) and the hon. Members for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) and of course the right hon. Members for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I thank the right hon. Lady for sharing with us this evening, because clearly she was personally directly and very closely involved with this, and her speech was incredibly valuable for me, not least in reminding me that Stephen Lawrence’s murder needs to be put in the context of what else was going on at that time in London. This has been an excellent debate.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), is no longer in her place, but I congratulate her and the rest of the Committee on bucking us up on this issue, because the timing could not be better to put the Government again under scrutiny and to make them accountable for delivery and us as a Parliament for the progress we make. Underlying this is the question of what kind of society we are and want to be, and the progress we are making towards that goal. As many Members have pointed out, the circumstances keep changing; the challenges evolve and some of the circumstances we are facing now, whether it be the emergence of the far-right or the terrible cycle of serious violence that we are trying to manage at the moment, mean that this situation and set of challenges are not going away, and we need to redouble our commitment to bear down on them.

The Chairman of the Select Committee talked about the legacy of Stephen, as did many others, and of course part of that legacy is the work of the Stephen Lawrence Trust. I hope that the inaugural Stephen Lawrence day on 22 April will be a wonderful success, and certainly my Department and I personally will do everything we can to make sure not least that the police engage in the most constructive and positive way with that day. The theme not just of commemorating the life and legacy of Stephen but also encouraging and supporting young people in the achievement of their dreams and living their best lives—as the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said, reminding us of the language of Baroness Lawrence—presents an important opportunity, and we must seize it and do that day proper justice.

As Stephen’s dad said, arguably Stephen’s most important legacy is the inquiry and the Macpherson report. We are used in this place to the power of words, but in a 350-page report two words have stood the test of time: the bombshell judgment of the Metropolitan police as “institutionally racist” was seismic in its impact not just on the police but on the establishment as a whole, because, as many have pointed out, of course underlying this story is a systemic failure to protect a young man and support a family and all the issues that raised.

We know from our experience in this place that reports come and go and few touch the sides or stand the test of time, but the Macpherson report does. The fact that a Minister is standing at the Dispatch Box being held to account for ongoing delivery against those recommendations 20 years later tells its own story about the importance of this report. I can confidently predict that the House will revisit this, not just in the immediate term because of the Home Affairs Committee but because the underlying issues are so important and systemic and because, as the hon. Member for Battersea rightly said, we do not live in a post-racial society. We must continue to revisit this and hold ourselves to account on this issue.

I am delighted to be at the Dispatch Box talking about this now. As most speakers have said, there are things to feel positive about. Looking through the recommendations this morning, I could see that 68 of the 70 had been implemented either in part or in full, but I look forward to the process of scrutiny by the Home Affairs Committee. The Home Office will certainly listen carefully to whatever recommendations it might make on the ongoing transparency surrounding the implementation of the recommendations.

As I am sure most Members will acknowledge, implementing recommendations in part or in full is one thing, but their having an effect is a different matter. That involves a different set of judgments. I believe that a lot has changed in police attitudes and processes, and I was encouraged to hear others speak of this as well, not least the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, who talked about tragic murder investigations in his constituency and about family liaison officers. My perspective on FLOs is as the Minister with responsibility for Grenfell victims. If I look back on the past difficult, dark and turbulent 18 months, and I look at the things that have gone right, I see the network of FLOs and support that they have given to bereaved families in the most traumatic circumstances. They have done an absolutely marvellous job in the most difficult circumstances.

When I look at our approach to hate crime, I also see an increased sense of responsibility and professionalism in the police in terms of identifying hate crime and racially aggravated crime. I believe that I can see progress there as well. So there is much to be positive about, but we must be very candid in recognising that there is so much more that needs to be done, not least to build confidence—a word used a lot by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) tonight—and trust in our criminal justice system. I actually genuinely believe that it is colour blind, but there are too many people in this country who do not. That is at the heart of this challenge.

This Government have not taken their eye off the ball on race. I take pride that, under this Prime Minister, we are, I think, the first Government in the world to conduct a race disparity audit. This will provide an invaluable tool for this process in the form of transparency, data and evidence that is open to scrutiny, to comparison and to measurement of progress. In my experience, it is that uncomfortable light that gets institutions moving. The race disparity audit is incredibly important, and one of the most uncomfortable lights that it throws is on the police.

We have heard many contributions to the debate about stop and search, not least from the hon. Member for Edmonton. She and other Opposition Members have a tremendous understanding of and sensitivity to this issue. I was delighted to hear praise for the Prime Minister’s personal leadership on what has arguably been the biggest reform of stop and search in its history. It was clearly being used in an absolutely disproportionate way, but we are not going back to the bad old days when more than 1.3 million were stopped but only 8% of them were arrested. The reality is that, although the figure has gone down to 300,000, it feels as though people have lost confidence in this important tool in the police box. The Government are trying to rebuild confidence in the police and their use of stop and search, but its use must continue to be intelligence-led and to have great transparency, enhanced by the use of body-worn video.

Another area in which I take pride is the progress we have made on increasing the accountability of the police. Again, without that accountability it is hard to make progress. The introduction of police and crime commissioners is a positive. The increased transparency on the performance of the police is a positive. The reform of the police complaints system is a positive. The enhanced role of the College of Policing in providing support and training is a positive. I congratulate the Police Superintendents Association on its leadership in providing mentoring services to several hundred police officers from BME communities across the country to help them with the issue of progress.

Let me say something about the issue that most Members spoke to—diversity. For me, diversity in policing matters enormously, because it is not just about social equality and equality of opportunity, and Peelian principle 7 of the police needing to represent and reflect their communities; it is also about the competition for talent and making sure that our police service has the ability to recruit the best, because policing has changed and we need to be sure that our police service recruits from the widest possible pool of talent. The point I would make to the shadow Home Secretary and those who say we have not made enough progress is that they are absolutely right: we are nowhere near where we need to be on diversity in policing. The right hon. Lady rightly references Bedfordshire police. What is interesting about Bedfordshire police, the Met and the West Midlands and Manchester police is that when we look at where positive action is deployed, within the law, and with the right leadership, resources and plan, the needle moves—it is extraordinary, but this is not rocket science. Bedfordshire has doubled the participation of BME officers in that force in a short number of years—it can be done.

Some will argue that we need to go further, beyond positive action to positive discrimination, and change the law. The Government are not in that place at the moment, because the leadership in the police are convincing us that they are serious about this. For the first time we have a national diversity strategy that all chiefs have signed up to. That is important because of the point that Jon Boutcher was making about the need for leadership from the top. The police is a compliance culture; the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) talked about culture and that comes from the top in policing. The fact that every police chief has signed up to this strategy gives me some encouragement. My role and that of the Home Secretary is to hold them to account on delivery, and we have made it clear, through the various roundtables at which we have sat down with them, that if we do not see quicker delivery on this, we may have to rethink our strategy. This is that important to the building and maintenance of trust in our policing, particularly in those communities where that trust is lower than the national average—the BME communities.

I wish to make one other point before we hear again from the hon. Member for Nottingham North. This is not just about recruitment, retention and progression; there is also something that needs to be addressed in respect of the cases of discrimination against police officers. Next week, I am meeting PC Nadeem Saddique, a firearms officer who waited 16 years for justice in terms of his claims about racist abuse by fellow officers in Cleveland police. That is absolutely unacceptable to me, so there is something also about the combating of discrimination within police forces and the lack of consequence for those found guilty of it that concerns me.

In summary, the Macpherson report was a watershed report. It was absolutely seismic in its impact. I congratulate Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, on his initiative and leadership at the time; this was absolutely the right decision and it was one of the biggest he took as Home Secretary, as he said. It is the responsibility of successive Governments, of whatever colour, to constantly revisit not just the implementation of the recommendations, important as that is, but their impact and effect, because at the heart of this is a debate about the tolerance and inclusiveness of our society, and the key institutions that we depend on for our safety and protection. They failed Stephen Lawrence. They failed the Lawrence family. There are still too many instances of failure around the system. We have not made as much progress as we need to. We need to be constantly vigilant and to redouble our commitment, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North suggested. With that commitment on behalf of the Government, I hand it back to him.