Stop and Search

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As the noble Baroness is probably alluding to, we eased the restrictions on stop and search back in 2019, and stop and search went up by 53%, but it led to 74,000 arrests and 11,000 arrests for knives and weapons. The important thing is that, when people are stopped and searched, there is intelligence to underpin the reasons for stop and search.

On that point about black people being 18 times more likely, it is a very troubling figure. It has actually gone down rather than up, so the situation was actually worse—not that that justifies it. But to go back to that reasonable and proportionate approach, that is the important thing.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

It seems that no force fully understands the impact of the use of stop and search powers, disproportionality persists and no force can satisfactorily explain why, and there are wide differences in performance between forces in the use of stop and search powers and in disproportionality. What action do the Government intend to take to ensure greater consistency of approach between forces on the use of these powers? Surely there should be at least a broad national standard that is actually adhered to, or do the Government disagree and believe that it is all an operational matter for each individual chief constable?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The use of data is very important, and police collection of data is very important to interrogate why some of the trends that we see are happening. I would also say that, in many ways, it is more complex than just the data we have, and some of the social and economic factors in this have to be taken into account. It is very important that the collection of data is also scrutinised as we go forward.