Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to his announcement on 1 April 2019 on the increased use of stop and search to tackle violent crime, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the Home Office research paper, Do initiatives involving substantial increases in stop and search reduce crime? Assessing the impact of Operation BLUNT 2, published in March 2016.

Police have been clear that the power to stop and search under Section 60 (s60) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is a powerful tool to combat serious violence. Over 600 people have been arrested for carrying weapons under s60 searches since 2010/11. Every weapon off our streets is a success and helps protect those communities who disproportionately experience serious violence.

On 31 March 2019, the Government announced that we will make it simpler for the police in the seven forces particularly affected by violent crime to use section 60 (area-wide) stop and search powers where they reasonably believe that an incident involving serious violence may occur. The changes are designed to allow the police to use these powers more quickly and effectively in anticipation of serious violence, safeguarding the public. These relaxations will apply for twelve months, with a review at the halfway point, in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), South Wales, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and Merseyside.

The Home Office paper ‘Do initiatives involving substantial increases in stop and search reduce crime? Assessing the impact of Operation BLUNT 2’ was published in March 2016. The paper reviewed the impact of a substantial increase in stop and search, including those under s60, from an average base level of stop and search which is higher than current levels.

Across the MPS there was a near threefold increase in weapons searches from 70,378 in 2007/08 to 205,704 in 2008/09. The study found that large surges in stop and search activity at the borough level had no discernible crime-reducing effects. However, the study concluded that it did not necessarily follow that stop and search activity does not reduce crime, either through more localised impacts, or through the existence of a ‘base level’ of stop and search activity where the tactic does have an effect.

Since 2010, the total number of stop and searches in England and Wales has decreased by 78% from 1.3 million in 2010/11 to fewer than 300,000 searches in 2017/18. The number of searches has also decreased by 72% compared to the five-year period prior to the commencement of Operation Blunt 2 in 2008. In addition, weapon specific searches in the MPS fell by 81%, from 136,126 in 2010/11 to 26,188 in 2017/18.

The large decrease in stop and searches, including searches for weapons, changes the operational context significantly and means it is not possible to make meaningful inferences from the 2016 research findings to the current s60 pilot.