Metropolitan Police: Stephen Lawrence Murder Investigation

Debate between Sarah Jones and Dawn Butler

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Davies.

May I start by echoing everybody else in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for giving such a detailed and harrowing list of all the failures in the way that this case was investigated, from the start right to the present day? There are some parallels with other cases, such as the Stephen Port murders, where four young men were murdered and multiple others were raped, and the Daniel Morgan inquiry, following his murder in 1987. There are similarities in terms of professional curiosity and not being interested in following leads, unconscious bias and structural bias—the structures of the institutions themselves not being equipped to solve these murders—and the conclusion, in some of those cases, that it was down to incompetence rather than corruption, when it is hard to see how there was not corruption.

[Dawn Butler]

The Daniel Morgan inquiry said that the police were institutionally corrupt; indeed, Cressida Dick was named in that report as somebody who stopped the investigation from continuing. Does my hon. Friend agree that every single report on the Met highlights another area of discrimination that needs to be tackled?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is right, and one thing that Baroness Casey found in her report was a defensiveness. That is why it was first suggested in the Daniel Morgan inquiry that we should introduce a legal duty of candour, because there is a big difference between that and asking somebody for information. In that case, the Met was asked for certain information and it gave it, but it also knew other things that it did not offer. That is the difference with a duty of candour, and that came from the Hillsborough inquiry. It is one of the law changes that the Hillsborough campaigners are asking for, because, similarly, information was not willingly given and there was a defensiveness.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the institutional problems is that we do not have systems in place to stop these things happening in the first place; therefore they can happen, and they do.

My hon. Friend set up the all-party parliamentary group on children in police custody and will be looking at the disproportionality of children in custody. She has a lot of expertise in that area and spoke very eloquently about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) gave an incredibly powerful speech and of course reminded us about the Lawrence family being tracked—which, as the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), said, is one of the most horrific aspects of all of this. My hon. Friend said that we are in this place not for show but to make things better, and that is incredibly important: we are not here to prove a point one way or the other, but to make things better. I hope that the Minister responds in that spirit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) mentioned the murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, which are of course all wrapped up in the same issues and are, again, some of the most horrific things I have ever read about. The grace of their mother in showing leadership and behaving in the way she has—similarly to how Baroness Lawrence has behaved—is also quite extraordinary. I know for a fact that I would not behave in that way.

[Dawn Butler]

Mina Smallman, the mother of Bibaa and Nicole, is absolutely phenomenal. Is it not also the case that mothers who have lost their children in such tragic circumstances should not need to be so graceful or dignified to get justice for their children? But they often need to be.

[Sarah Jones]

That is a really important point. On that point, it is no coincidence that the majority of my colleagues on the Labour Benches who are speaking today are women who happen to be black. It should not be on their shoulders to fix these problems. They have experienced racism all through their lives, and now we expect them to fix the problems as well. That is not right. We have the same debate when we talk about the need for more black officers in policing. Yes, we need more, but it should not be on them to solve the problems of the police. It should be on all of us. We all need to take that responsibility, especially those of us who have not had to bear the burden of racism.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Dawn Butler

Report stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I wonder where that stops and at what point we accept the right balance between the right to protest peacefully and the right of people to go about their business. The inspectorate called for a moderate reset and that is not what this is.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that without noise, protest will not achieve anything?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; that is clearly the case. It is also really important to note that the police at no point have asked for these powers on the basis of noise. The Metropolitan police said that it did

“not request the legal change on noise”.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on public order told Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights that police chiefs had asked for a “lower, broader threshold” for imposing conditions, but not a law relating to noise. Inspector Matt Parr told the JCHR that he was not asked to look specifically at whether or not noise should be included. The point of protest is to capture attention. Protests are noisy. Sometimes they are annoying, but they are as fundamental to our democracy as our Parliament.