Clause 11 Powers to stop and search without suspicion 2.40pm The
Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp) I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with Lords amendments 6B to 6F. The Bill
is about giving the police the tools they need to tackle the highly
disruptive protest tactics that we have seen in recent months,
which have blocked ambulances, delayed passengers making important
journeys, stopped children getting to school and prevented
patients...Request free trial
Clause 11
Powers to stop and search without suspicion
2.40pm
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire ()
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendments 6B
to 6F.
The Bill is about giving the police the tools they need to tackle
the highly disruptive protest tactics that we have seen in recent
months, which have blocked ambulances, delayed passengers making
important journeys, stopped children getting to school and
prevented patients from receiving critical medical care. We have
seen our capital city, London, being held to ransom. It cannot be
right that a selfish minority committed to causing as much
disruption as possible continue to get away with it. These
actions are not only impacting the public, but diverting the
police away from the communities they serve; in October and
November last year, something like 10,000 hours of Metropolitan
police time were taken up. That is why the Bill is so
important.
We have had some back and forth with the other place, but there
is now only one remaining issue to resolve between us. It
concerns the power to stop and search without suspicion, which
has been extended through the Bill to enable the police to search
for and seize articles related to protest activities. It is worth
saying that, before that power can be exercised, it requires a
police officer of the rank of inspector or above to have a
“reasonable” belief that a number of offences may be committed in
the area concerned. It further requires that officer to believe
that the conditions being imposed, and the authority to carry out
these searches, are necessary to prevent the commission of
offences. Moreover, the power lasts for only 24 hours and is
capable of extension for another 24 hours at the most. Therefore,
the power is to be used only where it is reasonably suspected an
offence may be committed, only where it is believed to be
necessary, and only for a time-limited period. Those are
important restrictions on the way the power can be used.
Stop and search is a vital tool used to crack down on crime and
protect communities. We see it as appropriate, in the face of
large, fast-paced environments where it can be difficult for the
police to reach the level of suspicion required for a
suspicion-led stop and search, for them to have this power
available as well.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I am old enough to remember when a policeman used his initiative
and intuition to suspect that a crime was probable, or could be
caused or had been caused. Does the Minister feel that the Bill
ensures that a policeman can still use his initiative to ensure
that those who are carrying out crimes can be detained with the
suspicion of cause, rather than without evidence?
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Police will often suspect that
crimes may be committed, but in a particular case an individual
may not reach the suspicion level and, in those circumstances,
these rules will apply. I completely agree with his point.
(North West Hampshire) (Con)
Can the Minister confirm, as an illustration, that, if a
demonstration is about to take place by a group who use a
particular tactic—gluing themselves to the road, for example—the
police may use this power to intercept individuals with glue in
their pockets, before they carry out an activity such as gluing
themselves that occupies enormous amounts of police time, often
puts them and police officers in danger, and causes enormous
inconvenience? In those circumstances, will the police be able to
use this power to get ahead of the problem?
The way my right hon. Friend puts it is good. It is in exactly
those circumstances, where the police are concerned that one of
the specified crimes may be committed, that they can use this
power. Those crimes are specified in clause 11(1), and include
offences under section 137 of the Highways Act 1980—that is
wilfully obstructing the highway—offences under section 78 of the
relatively new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022,
which involve
“intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”,
and various offences under the Bill, which include causing
serious disruption by
“tunnelling…being present in a tunnel… obstruction etc of major
transport works”,
interfering with critical national infrastructure, as well as
“locking on”, which I think is the point made by my right hon.
Friend.
(Cumbernauld, Kilsyth
and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
This was raised the last time we had this debate, but the
Minister mentioned the crime of nuisance. The threshold for that
is incredibly low. An inspector could be concerned that there was
a chance that someone would commit this offence by being
seriously annoying or inconveniencing somebody, and then we let
loose suspicionless stop and search of hundreds, potentially
thousands, of people, for no further reason than that. Is that
not a ludicrously low threshold for triggering these search
powers?
I am not sure I entirely agree. The offence of intentionally or
recklessly causing public nuisance is set out in section 78 of
the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and I do not
accept the characterisation of that offence as simply a minor
one. Causing huge inconvenience to other members of the public is
not something that this House should treat lightly, particularly
as we have seen examples in recent protests of ambulances not
getting through, and of people unable to get their children to
school or to attend medical appointments. I am not sure I accept
that characterisation.
A number of changes have been proposed in Lords amendments 6B to
6F. They first propose a higher level of authorisation for
suspicionless searches. By the way, the other place is not
disputing the principle; it is simply seeking to change some of
the thresholds, one of which would involve changing the authority
level in a way that would be inconsistent with the use of
searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public
Order Act 1994 in other contexts.
Another change relates to the time periods. As , a former commissioner of
the Metropolitan police, pointed out, the use of the power has to
be practical and reducing the time threshold to just 12 hours
would limit the ability of police forces to use these powers in a
meaningful way. We should take seriously the opinion of the noble
Lord who used to be the Met commissioner.
The changes proposed in the other place would also require a
chief superintendent to provide authorisation for this matter,
when an inspector is acceptable under the existing section 60. I
think that overlooks the urgency and speed with which these
protests can unfold, and the speed at which decisions need to be
made. It also has potential to cause confusion if there is a
different level of seniority here, compared with the
well-established section 60.
Finally, the amendments proposed in the other place would set out
in statute a requirement for the forces to communicate the
geographical extent of an order. The Government recognise that
communication of any power is important for understanding and
transparency. I am aware that most forces already communicate
their section 60 authorisations—I have seen that happen
frequently in Croydon and it is gratefully received when it
happens. But, for consistency, it is important to keep these new
powers as close as we can to existing legislation, although the
Government encourage forces to communicate any use of this power,
in the way they already do for a section 60 order, where it is
operationally beneficial to do so. There is a lot to be said for
consistency, which is why I respectfully encourage Members of
this House to gently and politely disagree with the other place
in their amendments 6B to 6F.
(Croydon Central) (Lab)
Stop and search is a crucial tool, as we all agree. Its normal
usage is based on intelligence around a crime or a potential
crime, based on proper suspicion, and applied for the right
reasons. In our country, we use stop and search with suspicion to
look for weapons, drugs and stolen property. Under particular
circumstances, we use suspicionless stop and search—a section 60,
as we call it—to search people without suspicion when a weapon
has been used, or where there is good reason to believe there
will be a serious violence incident. The Government are
introducing suspicionless stop and search for potential protests,
an overreach of the law that the police have not asked for and
which pushes the balance of rights and responsibilities away from
the British public.
Yesterday, we debated Baroness Casey’s report into the
Metropolitan police. It is an excoriating report that, among much
else, calls for a fundamental reset in how stop and search is
used in London. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister today
accept all the findings and recommendations in the report. The
report states:
“Racial disparity continues in stop and search in London. This
has been repeatedly confirmed in reports and research. Our Review
corroborates these findings.”
It is ironic that the day after the report was published the
Government are trying to pass laws that risk further damaging the
relationship between the police and the public by significantly
expanding stop and search powers way beyond sensible limits.
The hon. Lady says these measures may damage relations with the
public. The vast majority of the public feel very strongly that
their lives have been severely impacted by these protests, so
giving the police the tools to get ahead of them may in fact
command widespread public support, notwithstanding the issues of
protest. I wonder what her solution might be to the problem of
people who persistently come to protests and glue themselves to
all sorts of surfaces, thereby causing enormous disruption to
other people’s lives, disproportionate to the issue they are
protesting about.
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. We do not
disagree on some of the struggles here—we never have. We have
never said that it is not a problem in terms of major
infrastructure, getting around the country and so on. Our
argument has always been, first, a series of existing laws is in
place that enables the police to do their job. Secondly, the use
of injunctions could have been made easier—we put that case
forward in earlier stages of the Bill—so that we could get ahead
of some of these problems. But fundamentally, we disagree with
the premise that extending these powers, which are used at the
moment for serious violence, to this loose definition of
potential protest is helpful, or anything the police will
necessarily want or use.
Clause 11 will introduce wide-ranging powers for the police to
stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, including
any of us who happen to walk through the area. The Government’s
knee-jerk reaction to introduce sweeping powers that will risk
further damaging policing by consent is not the way forward.
Members in the other place passed very sensible changes to raise
the threshold for the powers in clause 11 to be used. To the
Minister’s point that they are not disputing the principle, they
have already disputed the principle—we have had that argument and
they have, rightly, as is their role, moved on. So they are
trying to contain what they think are the problems with these
measures. All we ask is that the Government accept these sensible
minor tweaks to clause 11.
Lords amendments 6B to 6F would raise the rank of the officer
able to authorise the power to stop and search without suspicion
for a 12-hour period to a chief superintendent. The Minister
argued that we need consistency. I do not accept that argument.
There are all kinds of different levels of all kinds of different
things across the law that we can all understand. Because this is
a more significant intervention for potentially a lesser crime,
the amendment is relatively reasonable.
Lords amendment 6C removes “subsection (ii)”, which means the
power could be used for the anticipation of “causing public
nuisance” such as merely making noise. Without this change, every
time music is played outside Parliament anyone could be stopped
and searched without suspicion. Baroness Casey suggests that
“as a minimum, Met officers should be required to give their
name, their shoulder number, the grounds for the stop and a
receipt confirming the details of that stop.”
Lords amendment 6F would insert:
“The chief superintendent must take reasonable steps to inform
the public when the powers conferred by this section are in
active use.”
That is important because communication failures are a common
factor in problematic stop and searches.
A recent report from Crest Advisory, examining the experience of
black communities nationally on stop and search, found that 77%
of black adults support the use of stop and search in relation to
suspicion of carrying a weapon. So, in the poll, the black
community absolutely agrees that we need the power to stop and
search. But less than half of those who had been stopped and
searched felt that the police had communicated well with them or
explained what would happen. That less than half of those who had
been stopped and searched felt that the police had communicated
well to them or explained what would happen shows how important
it is to make sure people are communicated with when these strong
and impactful powers are used by the police. If we imagine that
in the context of clause 11, where anyone can be stopped,
including tourists who might have got caught up in a crowd and
not know what is going on, there is a risk of a chaotic invasion
of people’s rights to go about their business.
We have discussed previously and at length the definition of
“serious disruption”. The Minister considers it
“more than a minor degree”.
Would being stopped and searched for simply walking through
Parliament Square when a protest is taking place disrupt his day
more than a minor degree? The suspicionless stop and search
powers being applied to protests are extreme and
disproportionate. We have raised many times in this House the
warnings from former police officers that they risk further
diminishing trust in public institutions.
After the devastating Casey report, it is hard to see how public
trust in the Metropolitan police could suffer more. Ministers
were unable to offer any solutions to bring the reforms we
desperately need in policing, but they could at least try not to
pass laws that would risk making trust and confidence in the
police even worse. Clause 11 will create powers that risk
undermining our Peelian principles even further. When Ministers
say that it would only be in very unusual circumstances that the
powers would be used, I want to stress, why bother? Why bother,
when to deal with disruptive protests the police could already
use criminal damage, conspiracy to cause criminal damage,
trespass, aggravated trespass, public nuisance, breach of the
peace and obstruction of the highway? The Minister knows I could
keep going. Many protestors have been fined and many have gone to
prison using those powers. Thousands of arrests are already made
using existing powers, but the Bill is apparently justified by an
impact assessment that says it will lead to a few hundred arrests
only. The powers are there for the police to use.
Disruptive protests have a serious impact on infrastructure and
on people’s ability to go about their daily lives. Over the
course of the passage of the Bill, we have spent many hours on
new ways to ensure the police have all the levers they need. We
tried to introduce sensible amendments on injunctions. The
Government’s response to the problem is a totally
disproportionate headline-chasing response that is, depressingly,
what we have come to expect. Gone are the days when the
Government were interested in passing laws that could fix
problems or make things better. The truth is that the
Government’s disagreement with the sensible narrowing amendments
from the other place will create more problems than it will
solve. I urge the Government to think again and to back these
common-sense amendments from the other place.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
I can now announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the
draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order
2023. The Ayes were 290 and the Noes were 14, so the Ayes have
it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s
debates.]
(Haltemprice and Howden)
(Con)
I will be brief because much of what I have to say agrees with
the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Croydon Central
().
I remind the House that the biggest curtailment of stop and
search in modern times was in 2010, when my right hon. Friend the
Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Home Secretary. The reason
she did it, in large part, was the feeling that nearly all the
stop and searches were in the Met—there were only about 50 in
Scotland one year, but thousands down here—and ethnic minorities
felt that they were targeted at them. The way they were pursued
made race relations in the capital worse.
3.00pm
On that point, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that every year
that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for
Uxbridge and South Ruislip (), was Mayor of London, the
number of stop and searches went down.
Mr Davis
I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Member for North West
Hampshire () wants to intervene on that point.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What he says is incorrect.
At the time, we were dealing with a huge spike in knife crime in
London, which was disproportionately reflected in the black
community. Young black men were dying on an almost daily basis
and, sadly, the vast majority of the perpetrators were also young
black men. There was definitely a campaign to try to eliminate
weapons from within that community, which worked. In 2008, 29
young people were killed in London, and by 2012 that was down to
eight, so the campaign was successful. During that period and up
to about 2016, confidence in the Metropolitan police rose to an
all-time high of 90%, including rising confidence among minority
communities in the capital. I am afraid that my right hon.
Friend’s basic premise is not correct.
Mr Davis
I have allowed my right hon. Friend to make his point, but the
simple truth was that the reason for the Home Secretary of the
day curbing stop and search was concern about its impact on
ethnic minorities. He is also right that the biggest number of
victims of knife crime came from ethnic minorities, so I take his
point. My answer to him—and the general concern here—is that bad
policing is not improved by bad law, which is what I think this
is.
That brings me to the Casey report. The hon. Member for Croydon
Central was right to cite the criticism of the Metropolitan
police. The report said that there were numerous examples of stop
and search being carried out badly. There were examples where
officers
“justified carrying out a search based on a person’s ethnicity
alone”.
That should not apply under any circumstance. There were examples
where officers
“Had been rude or uncivil while carrying out a search”
and
“had used excessive force, leaving people (often young people)
humiliated, distressed, and this damaged trust in the Met”.
Those are all bad things from our point of view.
We all want—I include the Opposition—the disgraceful trend in
modern demonstrations brought to an end. It is designed not to
demonstrate but to inconvenience—there is a distinction. But the
Bill is a heavy-handed way of doing that. The Minister tried to
say that the Lords had accepted the principle. They had not. What
they have sought to do with these amendments is leave the tool in
the hands of the police but constrain it in such a way that it is
used more responsibility.
The Lords amendments will change the level of seniority required
to designate an area for suspicionless search from inspector to
chief superintendent or above. Whatever says, that is not a
crippling amendment. Changing the maximum amount of time for
which an area can be designated from 24 hours to 12 hours is not
crippling but practical. While my right hon. Friend the Member
for North West Hampshire was doing his job in London, I was on
the Opposition Benches as shadow Home Secretary, dealing with a
number of Metropolitan Police Commissioners. That is a perfectly
practical change. Changing the level of seniority required to
extend the authorisation by a further 24 hours to chief
superintendent is, again, a practical change.
We talk about suspicionless stop and search. What does that mean?
It means the right to stop and search innocent people who have no
reason to be stopped and searched whatsoever. We are handing the
discretion to a police force that has been called upon to reset
its approach to stop and search. The Government are doing almost
precisely the opposite of what Casey is calling for. The final
amendment states:
“The chief superintendent must take reasonable steps to inform
the public when the powers conferred by this section are in
active use.”
Those are all practical changes. The smart action of the
Government is to accept them, carry on and try to improve on the
Metropolitan police that we have today.
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.
(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.
I do not wish to repeat everything I said at the beginning, but I
want to pick up on one or two points made in the course of this
short debate. The first point relates to policing’s position on
this power. The shadow Minister, my constituency neighbour the
hon. Member for Croydon Central (), said that the police had not
been calling for this. I politely draw her attention to what was
said by His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and
rescue services, which is run by a former chief constable:
“On balance, our view is that, with appropriate guidance and
robust and effective safeguards, the proposed stop and search
powers would have the potential to improve police efficiency and
effectiveness in preventing disruption and making the public
safe.”
I do not want to reiterate yesterday’s extensive debate about the
Casey report, which has been referred to, but I will say one or
two things about the use of stop and search in that context.
First, when I discussed stop and search with Sir Mark Rowley, the
commissioner, a few days ago, he pointed out that between 350 and
400 knives are removed every month from London’s streets using
stop and search. I think that is an extremely important
contribution to public safety.
In her report, Baroness Casey referred to academic research from
the United States that found that the use of stop and search led,
on average, to a 13% reduction in crime. For the sake of balance,
it is important to keep those points in mind.
It is fair to say that a very small proportion of stop and
searches result in complaints. That has been the case
particularly since body-worn cameras have been used, because the
officer knows that when conducting a stop and search the whole
thing is being recorded. Some of the bad practice that may have
been prevalent 10 or 15 years ago is much less likely to occur
when both parties are aware that the stop and search is being
recorded.
(Gillingham and Rainham)
(Con)
Of course stop and search has a role to play, but it has to be
applied appropriately and under the right criteria. As a
barrister who has prosecuted and defended cases, and having been
a member of the Home Affairs Committee, may I ask the Minister a
question specifically about stop and search? How many individuals
from diverse communities who have been stopped should not have
been stopped in the first place? We need to have that data to
know how to look at legislation moving forward. At the end of the
day, we have to carry communities with us and ensure there is
appropriate community cohesion. What is the figure?
In whatever context, stop and search has to be done in a
respectful and appropriate way. That is why body-worn cameras are
so important. As I pointed out a moment ago, only a tiny fraction
of stop and searches result in a complaint these days.
To conclude, we have recently seen protesters use tactics, often
covertly, that are deliberately and exclusively designed not to
protest as a way of communicating a message, but to cause
intentional disruption to other members of the public going about
their daily business, including children trying to get to school
and patients trying to get to hospital. These well-designed and
proportionate measures will help the police protect the public
and allow them to go about their daily business, while also
allowing the right to protest. Therefore, I respectfully invite
colleagues to disagree with Lords amendments 6B to 6F.
Question put.
[Division 198
The House divided:
Ayes
296
Noes
229
Question accordingly agreed to.
Held on 22 March 2023 at
3.15pm](/Commons/2023-03-22/division/57C2B6C2-E2E8-4250-AAE6-88790EC05B07/CommonsChamber?outputType=Names)
Lords amendments 6B to 6F disagreed to.
Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be
assigned to the Lords for disagreeing with their amendments 6B to
6F;
That , , , , , and be members of the
Committee;
That be the Chair of the
Committee;
That three be the quorum of the Committee.
That the Committee do withdraw immediately.—(.)
Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and
communicated to the Lords.
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