Public Order Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Stuart C McDonald

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I, too, rise to speak in support of the Lords amendments. These are amendments about suspicionless stop and search, and we need to draw a breath and remind ourselves that suspicionless stop and search really is a significant power. It is a hugely invasive, intrusive and arbitrary police tactic that causes incredible inconvenience for those who are impacted, and that is something that has not seemed to register at all with the Government throughout the entire process of discussing clause 11.

From the Casey report, we also know of the hugely significant impact that these powers can have on black and minority ethnic communities in particular, so it is plain wrong to be pressing on when trust has been undermined by a series of horrendous stories, particularly regarding the Metropolitan police, but far from exclusively. Nobody in this Chamber is saying that suspicionless stop and search powers are never, ever appropriate, but there must be serious justifications for them. Of course, there are serious justifications when it comes to terrorism or serious violence, but the powers in the Bill apply in circumstances that do not come remotely close to justifying their use. In some circumstances, we are talking about an inspector having a suspicion that somebody somewhere might commit a public nuisance. That is absolutely no basis for setting up a suspicionless stop and search regime, so this is an appallingly inappropriate expansion of such powers at a time when Casey has called for a reset of practice with regard to them.

As such, we support these Lords amendments. The arguments in favour of them have been set out comprehensively in the last two speeches that we have heard. If anything, the amendments are very limited and do not go anywhere near far enough, but they are just about better than nothing, and they may provide some reassurance for those who are going to be at the sharp end of such searches. We therefore support them and disagree with the Government motion.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I return to trust, which is the basis of policing by consent. We need trust in the police, not just so that when people pick up the phone they get assistance, but from an intelligence perspective as well. One concern that I have had consistently throughout the debate on the Bill is that, in eroding that trust, we will fail to get the intelligence that we need in order to prevent some of the offences that the Government are attempting to stop via the Bill.

The Minister has pointed out the additions to the PACE code, but I wonder whether, if those in the other place had not persisted in their course in relation to suspicionless stop and search, we would have got that climbdown from the Government. I agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that we need this provision on the face of the Bill. The reality is that when we look separately at section 60 searches—again, this is from the Casey report—it does not appear that a sudden surge in use had any effect on the underlying trend.

I have deep concerns that if the Government are successful in disagreeing with the Lords amendments today, which I suspect they might be, we will miss the opportunity of the Casey report and, several years from now, we will be standing in this place debating the fact that—we told the House so—stop and search does not work.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Stuart C McDonald

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I will be brief because I agree entirely with the two previous speakers. There should be no suspicionless stop and search powers anywhere near a Public Order Bill. It is pretty grim that removing clause 11 entirely from the Bill is now off the table. All we are debating, in essence, are a few inadequate safeguards, yet still the Government are not listening to or understanding the concerns of those who will be stopped and searched.

As we have heard, yesterday the Casey report spoke about the UK’s largest police force needing a fundamental reset on stop and search, because it was being deployed at the cost of legitimacy, trust and therefore consent. Among the report’s stark conclusions was that enough evidence and analysis exist to confidently label stop and search a racialised tool.

Suspicionless stop and search is a counterproductive, disruptive and dangerous police tactic for a whole host of reasons. Yet here we are, the day after Casey, and the Government still insist on handing out a ludicrously broad and totally disproportionate power to do just that. It is not good enough for the Government to say that the use of the powers will be restricted, as the Minister in the other place sought to do. The same Minister said that the whole reason for keeping public nuisance in the scope of clause 11 was that it was an offence committed so frequently. Suspicionless stop and search to prevent the possibility of someone being seriously annoying or inconveniencing someone would almost be funny if it was not so deadly serious. The Government should at least get public nuisance out of the scope of the clause.

The Minister said that he was trying to seek consistency on the rank of the authorising officer, but it is comparing apples and oranges if the Government think that a power to tackle nuisance has to be consistent with the power to tackle serious violence. It is also selective because, as was pointed out in the other place, no-suspicion stop and search powers in relation to terrorism require a far higher rank before they can be authorised.

I will finish my brief contribution with the Casey report, which states:

“We heard that being stopped and searched can be humiliating and traumatic. Yet we could find no evidence of the Met considering how this would impact on how those who had been stopped would use the police service”.

The Government’s insistence on this power means that exactly the same criticism can be levelled at them. They do not recognise the serious disruption caused by suspicionless stop and search. The fact that they have been so tin-eared to concerns raised is pretty worrying. The Lords amendments are the barest minimum that we can do to restrict a severe and draconian power, and we should support them.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is three in a row, as I agree and associate myself with the remarks of the previous speakers. It is important to look at the Lords’ amendments in the light of yesterday’s Casey report. Throughout my involvement with the Bill, I have always tried to look at it as a former police officer, although not a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. I have always tried to think about the Bill from the perspective of the police officers who will be required to carry out the powers in it, and from the capacity perspective—the capacity of officers to go and do these duties and to be trained to carry them out.

On the first point, I refer to page 86 of the Casey report, which states:

“The lack of comprehensive workforce planning and prioritisation…throughout this report also makes for a weak approach to learning and development. Officers regularly said that they had to keep their own records and that they were not held centrally.”

Can the Met say how many officers it has currently trained in public order, whether in basic command units doing aid training or in tactical support groups? When the Bill is enacted and police come to court, the defence will ask officers what training they had in these powers, so that is a valid point.

The second bit is about capability. If officers have not attended the training but are then abstracted to attend a protest, do they actually have the skills at all? I want to pick up on page 131 of the report, which mentions tactical support groups and their use across London. It states:

“While they can be tasked to carry out policing functions in a BCU area, they are not accountable to the BCU chain of command. This can undermine a BCU’s attempts to own its very extensive patch, and to be fully accountable for policing there, both to the Met and to the public.”

It goes on to say:

“We were told that specialist teams tended to have rigid attitudes to their style of policing. ‘TSG come here not knowing the area…they come late, allegedly go to the gym on job time…they annoy the community, and arrest people who probably didn’t need to be arrested anyway… My colleagues think it suppresses crime. I don’t think it’s worth the community upset, it poisons the relationship with the community.’”

Those comments have been made by some of the core teams that will be enacting these powers.

My third point goes back to the comments I made last time we discussed these Lords amendments. Whether a police officer is attending an incident or a spontaneous protest, and whether they are a police constable attending by themselves or taking directions from a silver public order commander in relation to a planned protest, they are still exercising those powers and making those decisions. We must look at the stress placed on police officers who are juggling all those multiple demands. Again, I refer to page 90 of the Casey report:

“The reality of policing means that most of the time, police officers are in threat perception and threat management mode.”I suggest that when people are policing in those kinds of modes, the strain they are under means that making good decisions, potentially about complex legislation, becomes more challenging.

I agree with the comments have been made about clause 11 being removed in its entirety; indeed, my colleagues in the other place continued to support that. We also support the new amendments that we are considering. In terms of arguing whether they are reasonable or not, I say this: they reflect the safeguards and the BUSS—best use of stop and search—scheme, which was introduced in 2014 and scrapped by the former Home Secretary in May 2022. What is proposed in the amendments has previously been utilised by the police, so I do not see why they cannot continue to do so.