PACE (Stop and Search)

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I appreciate the opportunity to have this debate. The shorthand definition of the code of practice that I wish to consider is “stop and search”, but it also includes “stop and account”. The draft guidelines recently issued by the Government state:

“The primary purpose of stop and search powers is to enable officers to allay or confirm suspicions about individuals without exercising their power of arrest.”

We would all recognise that that is an important part of policing powers, but some issues arise from it and I have some questions to which I should appreciate a response from the Minister. My interest arises partly from my membership of the all-party parliamentary group on race and community and from conversations that I have had with the Runnymede Trust and the StopWatch coalition, both of which have alerted me to issues of the context in which the proposed changes and guidelines are being made. The most significant issue is disproportionality between people of different ethnic origins.

A black person is at least six times as likely as a white person to be stopped and searched by the police. It is twice as likely to happen to an Asian. That is grossly disproportionate and those ratios have remained stubbornly constant in the past five years. The report “Stop and think”, which was produced earlier this year by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, included research findings that

“black and ethnic minority youths were over-represented in the criminal justice system. This over-representation started at the point of entry into the system, and largely continued as young suspects and defendants passed through it.”

If the very first part of a person’s interaction with the criminal justice system is disproportionate, there may be consequential effects at other stages in that system.

The black population of England and Wales is approximately 2.6%, but black people represent 14.8% of incidents of stop and search, 7.6% of arrests and 14.4% of the prison population. I think that anyone would find those statistics chilling. It is a rare thing for me to say I agree with Bernie Grant, the former Member of Parliament for Tottenham, but in 1997 he said:

“Nothing has been more damaging to the relationship between the police and the black community than the ill judged use of stop and search powers. For young black men in particular, the humiliating experience of being repeatedly stopped and searched is a fact of life”.

Of course society has moved on in 13 years, but, as the statistics have shown, disproportionality is still significant.

Stop and search is not a power that is used occasionally. Last year, there were more than 2 million instances of stop and account by police and more than 1 million of stop and search. That amounts to more than 10,000 a day, which is not only disproportionate, but shows widespread and pervasive use in our society.

I accept—and this is probably much of the intent behind Government moves—that the recording of information accounts for considerable police time. It is estimated by the Daily Mail that the proposed changes will save 450,000 hours of police time by eliminating the stop-and-account element and 350,000 hours of police time by reducing stop-and-search forms. Those are welcome savings in police time, to enable our police to spend more time in their jobs on the beat, and in helping citizens by combating crime.

However, against a backdrop of considerable community concerns, and severely disproportionate impacts, perhaps the Minister could assist with the answer to some questions. The first is about the removal of the requirement to record stop and account. As I have said, that represents 2 million actions by the police each year, so it is certainly clear that removing the requirement to record stop and account will save considerable police time. However, as we have not yet ended disproportionality, is the Minister concerned that we would lose an important source of information on fairness?

I understand that it would be possible for chief constables to re-institute stop-and-account searches if local concerns were expressed. That is a very welcome part of the proposals, but how will the local pressure be voiced? What would constitute a valid local concern and how would it be differentiated from concerns thought to be invalid?

I would also appreciate the Minister’s views on the decision by Suffolk police to de-fund the stop-and-search reference group. What message does that send to people who have concerns about disproportionality and the reliance on the raising of concerns by local voices? On the same point, what role does the Minister see for the Equality and Human Rights Commission? Are steps such as the enforcement action warning that it issued this week to Thames Valley police and other forces seen as part of the community response to disproportionality in stop and account and stop and search?

The Government have—and I welcome this—removed parts of the justification for section 60 stop and search on the grounds of race. The National Black Police Association said the original draft proposal

“opens the door to racial targeting that could be based on gossip, malice and outright racial prejudice.”

Perhaps I might use this opportunity to thank the Minister for, and congratulate him on, the changes, and for his statement:

“Previous guidance did not place any restrictions on use but now it will make clear than an individual characteristic such as ethnicity should never be the sole basis for any search.”

That shows the direction of travel of the Government. They will look at areas where there is disproportionality and seek to eliminate that. They will look at areas where ethnicity is misused in policing, and ensure that that no longer happens. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on the background to the draft guidelines and the change.

Section 60 stop and search is a very significant power that we provide to the police. It enables the police to stop and search an individual where there are no grounds for suspicion of the particular individual, in a designated area, for a period of 24 hours. Nationally the black population of the country, as I said earlier, is about 2.6%, but they represent 32% of stops and searches under section 60. Therefore, under the police power to stop and search with no grounds for suspicion of the individual concerned, a black person is 26 times more likely than a white person to be stopped. That is a shocking statistic and everyone, including members of the police force, will want that ratio to be changed.

The usage of this blanket power, which does not rely on individual assessment or suspicion, has grown over the past few years. In 2004-05, there were 45,600 incidences of section 60 stop and search being used. Just three years later, in 2008-09, the figure had more than trebled to 149,955. This is a specialised, exceptional power akin to those available under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Does the Minister believe that there should be specialist oversight of the authorisations that chief constables are using to invoke this power? I am not aware of any areas where there is currently national oversight over particular actions by chief constables, but given that the use of these authorisations is growing and disproportionate, and given that these very powerful measures are targeted on an area, not an individual, I would greatly appreciate it if the Minister could tell us what oversight, if any, there could be over them.

Other issues are related to the information collected on the stop-and-search form. Again, I think that the proposals are being introduced with the good intention of reducing the amount of police time that is spent on form filling. The Minister may, in an offhanded way, have called it box ticking, but I am sure that he accepts that some of this information is valuable. I want to alert him, therefore, to some reasons why some of the information that will be lost from these forms might be valuable, and he might want to consider how such concerns could be addressed.

The first piece of information that will be lost from the stop-and-search form is the name of the person who has been stopped and searched. How will it be possible to identify and measure repeat stops and searches that might amount to harassment? If an individual is stopped and searched routinely by the police, that will be evident from the current form because the individual’s name will have been collected, but it will not be evident under the proposed change. How might we deal with concerns about harassment if that information is lost?

Secondly, as a result of the targeting of individuals in a community, there might be community concerns. How will the community have the information that it needs to identify and measure whether particular individuals are being targeted? There is, therefore, not only the individual concern; there will also be a community concern if four or five individuals are routinely stopped and searched and people feel that their community is being unfairly targeted.

The second piece of information that will be lost is whether injury or damage was caused as a result of the search. If that information is not collected, my concern is that we might leave the police open to allegations that some injury or damage was caused. How will it be possible to identify and account for incidents of the misuse of force? The corollary of that is the issue of how the police will be guaranteed protection against allegations that an injury did occur.

The third piece of information that will be lost relates to whether anything was found as a consequence of the search. One of the concerns about the use of stop and search relates to how effective it is in tackling crime. With so few stops and searches resulting in an arrest, how will we know how effective stop and search is likely to be if we have no information about whether anything is found as a consequence of a search? Overall, stops and searches have resulted in an arrest rate of about 10% to 13%, which means that nine out of 10 stops and searches—3 million in total—do not result in an arrest. Three million is a widespread trawl through our communities, and that can have counter-productive effects by separating the police from the communities that they serve.

Over the past few years, since the quote from Mr Grant, progress has been made. Our police have done an enormously good job of reaching out to communities. We need to do more of that, but stop and search is not necessarily one of the main ways to do it. We need look only at the effectiveness of one of the important powers in section 60 in tackling knife crime. A review of statistics from 11 London boroughs with a high incidence of knife crime showed a broad correlation between the incidence of knife crime and the number of stops and searches—when there are a large number of knife crimes, the police carry out more stops and searches. However, there is no correlation between the number of stops and searches and a reduction in knife crime.

Let me give an example. In 2008-09, Tower Hamlets and Islington both experienced approximately 305 knife crimes. The police in Tower Hamlets responded with a stop-and–search rate that was two and a half times that of Islington. Although knife crime fell by 11% in Tower Hamlets, it fell by nearly 25% in Islington where such a large number of stops and searches were not carried out.

People in those communities want knife crime dealt with. However, stop and search does not appear to be a tool that helps and we must look at alternatives. In his response, perhaps the Minister will talk about initiatives other than stop and search that can be used to reduce the disproportionality of the statistics on ethnicity in our criminal justice system.

For example, the practice-oriented package initiative that was introduced in Stoke-on-Trent reduced the disproportionality ratio from six times the national average to just 1.5 times that average. In Cleveland, the number of stop and searches was reduced by 80%. That reduced the disproportionality in stop and search and also reduced the crime rate. Will the Minister also endorse police innovations in tackling drugs without the use of stop and search, which has been done to good intent?

I understand, appreciate and support the Government’s efforts to reduce the waste of police time spent collecting information that is not helpful in tackling crime. I believe and understand that the Minister shares my concerns about disproportionality and wishes to ensure that police powers are used correctly. I welcome the change to the draft guidelines that have stopped ethnic profiling from being written into our legislation. That move is welcome, but considerations and concerns remain about the continuation of stop and account without the recording of information, and about the reduction of information in the stop-and-search forms. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.