Macpherson Report: Twenty-two Years On

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Thank you, Ms McDonagh. It feels a little strange to be summing up after just one speaker, but the speech of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) was a comprehensive one that took us on the journey that led to the need for this report. Twenty-two years on from the Macpherson report, it is clear that work remains to be done to tackle racism in society and in policing.

We wonder why people become disillusioned. I am sure that all those decades ago, when the report was published, there were many who heaved a sigh of relief—its aim, after all, was to

“increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities”.

I am also sure that all those decades ago, when the aim of the report was stated to be

“the elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing”,

many felt they had finally achieved progress. I am sure that everyone involved was aware that Rome was not built in a day, but had some hope, and maybe even allowed themselves a little confidence that life for those experiencing racism would soon change for the better.

The family of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered and then denied justice because of the colour of his skin—the family in response to whom the Macpherson report came about—perhaps felt when that report was published that his death had not been completely in vain. I have met Stephen’s brother, Stuart Lawrence, and of course we all know or know of his father, Neville Lawrence, and his mother, Baroness Doreen Lawrence. Anyone who listens to Stuart or reads his book, “Silence is Not An Option”, begins to understand the catastrophic impact Stephen’s death had on everyone in his family and how they have all had to work so hard, almost every minute of every day, simply to survive.

To a lesser degree, the impact on whole communities was also devastating and life-changing. To have the hope that things would get better for other mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters when the report was published 22 years ago, and then to come to the conclusion that Doreen Lawrence reached recently, namely that

“things have become really stagnant and nothing seems to have moved”,

which is the view that prompted the Home Affairs Committee’s third report on Macpherson, must make it all the harder to keep going.

That third report recognises that there remains an awful lot to do. As we have heard, it refers to a lack of confidence in the police among black people—a belief that they will not be treated fairly by the police and a belief that they are not treated with respect. We have heard the figures about stop and search. Saddest of all, there is the belief among black people that the police will not keep them safe.

The report is about England and Wales, but Scotland, of course, is not immune to these challenges, and the Scottish Government and Police Scotland have also taken decisive action recently to try to tackle them. The Chief Constable of Police Scotland, Iain Livingstone, spoke in March of the need for

“practical, firm, progressive, visible action”.

And he also said that

“Words and good intent are not enough.”

He is right, and he also made an offer to police forces across the UK to share the insight and value that Scotland’s hard-earned lessons can provide, in order to improve policing for communities across the UK.

I am very conscious that when Scottish National party MPs talk in this place about things that we do better, or just differently, in Scotland, sometimes there is a collective rolling of eyes: “Oh, not this again”. However, I hope that colleagues will accept that, yes, sometimes we are trying to make a political point but mostly we are trying to share our experience in the hope that it can help other public bodies, in this case police forces. The SNP group is always looking to the experiences of other countries, including the other countries of the United Kingdom, to see how we can improve our own public services. So I acknowledge that this is a two-way thing. In that spirit, I will talk about a time when I believe Police Scotland got things spectacularly wrong and also got its response wrong, too.

I am talking about Sheku Bayoh. Sheku died after being stopped in the street by two police officers, who were soon joined by another seven police officers, in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, in May 2015. There is a public inquiry under way about this case right now. However, it has been seven years since Sheku died and his family, who I have met on a number of occasions, have still not had answers. How did this fit young man in his thirties—a brother, a son, a dad, a partner, a friend—who had no weapons on him end up dead after encountering the police?

I cannot answer that question and I will leave it to the inquiry, but what I will say is that in any other situation where nine people confronted one person, and the one person ends up dead, those nine people would be taken in for questioning, at the very least. They would not be allowed to discuss what had happened with each other; they certainly would not be allowed to send out press releases that were later found to have wrongly characterised the dead man and that told their side of the story before the dead man’s family even knew he had died. It simply would not happen.

Given that we know—nobody denies this—that Sheku was sat on, and given that we know that there was no question over who was with him or who was sitting on him at the moment of death, how on earth can it have taken seven years before we even start to hear what happened that day? The inquiry continues and is considering whether race was a factor in Sheku’s death.

So, Members will not hear me nor, I imagine, anyone in my party claiming that Scotland or our police force is racism-free.

However, the overall approach to policing in Scotland is a community-based approach, which is built on policing by consent. It is about reducing tensions rather than inflaming them unnecessarily. The aforementioned Chief Constable of Police Scotland has consistently made it clear that the policing tone and style must reflect the need for positive engagement.

If we look at the recent lockdowns, we see that the vast majority of people complied with the rules, and policing in Scotland was focused on engaging, explaining and encouraging. That is reflected in public confidence in the police in Scotland, with figures from last year’s crime and justice survey showing that the majority of adults in Scotland believe that the police in their local area are doing an excellent job or a good job. That majority is 55%. Clearly, we want it to be higher than that.

I agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee when she says that we need technology, and that the vast majority of police officers and other police staff work tirelessly to protect and support people in communities. That majority feel as let down as the rest of us when a small minority of police officers fall short of the expected standards.

As I have already alluded to, they do not always work but there are robust processes in place to investigate misconduct. It is a matter for Police Scotland to consider any disciplinary allegation, but if there are allegations of criminality against a police officer, Police Scotland will refer the matter to the Crown Office. What matters more than anything is that there are robust, clear and transparent mechanisms in place to investigate complaints or other issues of concern. I am pleased to say that things have moved on and improved in that respect, since Sheku Bayoh’s death.

In 2018 the Scottish Government commissioned Dame Elish Angiolini to independently review police complaints handling, investigations and misconduct. Her final report was completed 2020; her review made 111 recommendations, the majority of which the Scottish Government accepted. The Scottish Government and Police Scotland are doing a lot more work on that than I have time to detail. However, some of the positives are around mainstreaming equality, diversity and inclusion, and working with diversity staff associations, such as SEMPER Scotland, which is an association that supports all minority ethnic employees in Police Scotland. The Chair of the Committee talked about recruitment targets. SEMPER has talked to me about not only recruitment but retention, and ensuring that environments are made in such a way that they retain those members of staff.

Finally, I will say a few words about the Scottish Government’s new hate crime strategy, to be published later this year. It will set out our approach to tackling hatred and prejudice in Scotland, and it will complement the implementation of a modernised hate crime legislative framework. It is vital that the legislation is implemented effectively, so that once it is in force it offers strength and protections to those targeted by hatred and prejudice. It includes rigorous safeguards on free speech; it does not prevent people from expressing controversial, challenging or offensive views, nor does it seek to stifle criticism or rigorous debate. What it does is criminalise and hold to account those who express or demonstrate their prejudice in a threatening or abusive way with the intention of stirring up hatred or committing other offences motivated by prejudice.

I hope when the Government are able to get on with their day job fully—I understand why they cannot at the moment—the Minister’s Department will look at that afresh. I echo the calls of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I will end by remembering just two of the many people failed by our systems on these islands. I think saying names out loud is important. Stephen Lawrence, rest in power. Sheku Bayoh, rest in power. You will never be forgotten.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, on her important contribution today. I put on the record how incredibly important the Home Affairs Committee report is, how thorough and good it was, and how important it is, 20 years on from the Macpherson report, that there is something looking back on what has been achieved and what has not.

My right hon. Friend set out very well what stage we are at, and how much more needs to be done. I am particularly pleased that during the process the Committee managed to talk to young people about their experience at the other end of a stop and search. I was talking to a Conservative police and crime commissioner the other day, who is black, and has been stopped and searched many times. I suspect that most of us in this Chamber have not had that experience because we are white. To understand what it feels like, and how intrusive it can be, I think we need to speak to people who are affected. I congratulate the Committee for thinking to do that—and for ensuring it was done.

We have been talking about racism and disproportionality in policing for decades, certainly since the Scarman report in 1981, the death of Stephen Lawrence in 1992 and then the Macpherson report in 1999. That report was a watershed moment for British policing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North said, the national figures on public confidence show that there is a significant variation, depending on their ethnicity, in people’s confidence in the police. Confidence in the police was at 74% for white British people, 69% for black African people and 54% for black Caribbean people. The murder of Stephen Lawrence and the campaigning that has been done since has been so important in shining a light on these issues. I cannot not mention Doreen and Neville Lawrence, who have been so instrumental and gracious in the way they have tried to help us all do better when it comes to these big problems of racism.

When the Home Affairs Committee looked at Macpherson, it did find, as has been said, that there has been positive progress in some areas and that the policing of racist hate crimes and the representation of ethnic minorities within police ranks has improved. However, it found that there are persistent, deep-rooted and unjustified racial disparities in key areas. It found a lack of confidence in the police, a lack of progress on recruitment, problems in misconduct proceedings and stark racial disparities in stop and search. Although the Committee found that policing today is very different from 22 years ago and that there have been improvements, there are persistent problems and unjustified racial disparities in a number of key areas.

Macpherson rightly called for police forces to be representative of their communities. At the current rate of recruitment, it will take 20 years until police forces are such. I represent Croydon Central. Croydon is a very diverse borough and although our police force have done some brilliant work with local communities on building trust and confidence—important work, and I praise them for it—the colour of our police officers is still not reflective of the communities that they serve. The unit that goes out and does stop and search in Croydon has about 80 people, and last time I checked there was not a single black officer among them. That absolutely has to change, and change is happening too slowly.

Black and minority ethnic police officers are more than twice as likely to be dismissed from their role than white officers. The report also found that stop and search is more disproportionate now than it was 22 years ago. We know that when it comes to stop and search, the measure of success is whether a knife or something similar is found. When the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Home Secretary and reduced the number of stop and searches and made it more intelligence-driven, the incidence of disproportionality fell in that period. It has got worse again with greater use of section 60 stop and search.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Just on that, does the hon. Lady agree that allowing suspicionless stop and search under the Public Order Bill will increase disproportionality rates between the different ethnicities, because now officers will not actually need an excuse to stop and search somebody who might be near a protest?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We both served on the Public Order Bill Committee and it was deeply concerning to note that there has been a large increase in the use of section 60, not just to tackle violent crime and threat of harm but protest without any real consideration of how that will increase disproportionality. That is a real risk. The figures on disproportionality and ethnicity and drug use have already been given. They are really stark, and there is a lot of work to be done on stop and search in that context.

Recent high-profile cases have highlighted concerns around policing. The conduct of officers following the murder of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman was deeply shocking for everybody. The strip-searching of children such as child Q and the adultification of children, particularly black children, that seems to be commonplace, the failings in the case of the death of Richard Okorogheye and the IOPC report on that and the conduct unveiled in the IOPC’s report into the Charing Cross police station show that there are pockets in policing where progress is not happening fast enough. Those pockets seem to cover large areas, because such problems have not just been seen in the Met police; we have seen similar issues across the country, so all forces need urgently to address the deep and troubling lack of confidence among black communities in policing and the criminal justice system.

I have been working with police chiefs and the NPCC since they set up a big programme of work on disproportionality and racism in policing, and I am pleased that their action plan is significantly better than it was when first drafted. It has been beefed up and has some real legs. I am pleased to see the recommendations in there and the very honest way in which the police chiefs have articulated the problem. They have set out an ambition to identify and address disproportionality in the use of stop and search, particularly in relation to drugs and searches of children. They will have robust accountability and learning processes, based on security and supervision.

The challenge with stop and search and disproportionality across the board is that we can see the numbers but we do not know why there is an issue. We assume things about racism, but there is not proper evidence. Evidence needs to be gathered about the places where people are stopped, the interactions and what happens to people. For example, if someone driving a car is stopped and searched, recording data is now being introduced. That was not the case before, and we know that there is huge disproportionality in stop and search for people who are driving. The evidence is not there for us to pull together and find out what needs to be done.

The NPCC will review the use of the smell of cannabis as grounds for stop and search, because that increases disproportionally. It will also review the use of Tasers, section 60, intimate searches and standardised recording practices. The breadth of what it has set itself to do shows how seriously it takes this issue. It will increase the awareness and understanding of every officer and member of staff about racism, anti-racism, black history and its connection to policing, through the introduction of a mandatory programme of training for all police officers and staff. Of course, we welcome that. It is looking at reducing racial disparities in misconduct cases and the complaints process, and is improving support to black officers and staff. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North highlighted, there are pockets of good practice, but it is not across the board.

The NPCC is looking to trial and test methods for better enabling black people to have their voices heard and raise concerns. It is looking at the criminal exploitation of young black men, which we have talked about, and is working to disrupt the cycle of victims becoming offenders.

The NPCC is introducing a national standard across all recruitment and promotion processes to minimise race disparities. The Home Affairs Committee suggested targets. I am quite a fan of targets, and I have had lots of conversations with police officers about the unintended consequences of them. It is good that the NPCC has gone for a national standard.

All that work is good, but I worry that the Government do not take this issue as seriously as they should. They tend to push it out to individual police forces or to the NPCC, when it chooses to come together. I worried about the introduction of serious violence prevention orders in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 without a proper analysis of what the disproportionate impact will be on young black men. I worried about the extension of section 60 to protests without any proper consideration of disproportionality. We all worried when we read the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, which the Government commissioned, and the lack of action in it.

I worry that the Government have a habit of waiting for the IOPC or HMIC to look at something and bring out a report, which often takes years, instead of taking action themselves. For example, the IOPC and the inspectorate looked at what happened during lockdown in London, where there was an increase in the use of stop and search. Habits formed around handcuffing people—in particular, young black men—when they were being stopped and searched, which the police are not supposed to do unless there is a threat of violence. What I think happened was that a lot of new, inexperienced police officers came in through the uplift. They were not supervised properly and they learned bad behaviour. They learned how not to do stop and search, because more experienced people were not there to do it. I worry that the Government did not see that problem and intervene to do something about it.

The Labour party has long called for improved anti-racism policies and for tougher action to increase diversity in all ranks of policing. A clear combined plan needs to be implemented by police forces, driven by the Home Office, with proper scrutiny and consequences if action falls short. Racism and bias must be tackled wherever they are found.

After child Q, we all called for new guidance on strip searches, but we still have not seen it. When it comes to the pressing issues of reforming police culture and standards, there are myriad actions that Ministers could choose to take, but they point to inquiries that have been set up and tell us that we must wait for this and wait for that, without taking action themselves. A record number of police forces are in the engage phase, a form of special measures. We need a national overhaul of training and standards. There is much to be done on leadership in the police. We need better leadership development at every rank and a new vetting system. We need to overhaul misconduct cases and new rules on social media use. All of those things would help tackle some of the disproportionality and bad culture in the Home Office. All of those issues could be led from the front, with the Home Office taking action.

A lot of these problems are in the Met. If we look at its ratio of PC to sergeant, we will see that supervision has been cut more than that of any other force, so there are not enough supervisors to make sure that the right cultures and practices are in place for PCs. Surely the Government cannot be happy with that ratio and the lack of support for the raft of new officers. There has been a hollowing out of experience. The Government cannot replace the 21,000 experienced officers they have cut without losing all their helpful experience.

The report is very important. It highlights that progress has been made, but there is lots more to be done. I congratulate the police leaders and the NPCC who are independently pushing new proposals to improve things, but without Government intervention and leadership I do not think we will go fast enough. The suggestion that it will take 20 years to have a police service that is reflective of the communities they serve is a stark example of that.

The policing style in Britain is one of consent. The public have to trust the police for the system to work, and at the moment some communities, particularly black communities, do not. The public need to trust the police. Victims need to get the justice they deserve, regardless of the colour of their skin, and our officers deserve to work in a police force that has high standards and a respectful culture.

Given the chaos around us, the Minister does not have this power right now, but the new Government could choose to drive up standards. They could insist on the recruitment of more black officers, tackle disproportionality and increase professionalism in policing, instead of saying, time and again, as the former Policing Minister always did, that there is an inquiry into this, a report on that, and that we would just have to wait and see. Tackling racism is an active job. As one of the resigning Ministers, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), said yesterday:

“not doing something is an active decision.”—[Official Report, 6 July 2022; Vol. 717, c. 876.]