---

Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. I want to elucidate some of the confusions existing around this amendment. I had originally placed an amendment before the House, which I accept was probably much too complicated. I am grateful to my noble friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches for making a better go at this than I did. The reason why I support the amendment—and the reason why I think there is some confusion—is that when Section 44 was brought into the terrorism legislation in 2000, there was agreement that there could be circumstances in which stop and search should not require a reasonable suspicion and that the circumstances would be of such an extreme kind that one would want to move away from the police being expected to have a reasonable suspicion, which is what we require ordinarily. We were saying that there could be circumstances where, for example, the whole of Whitehall—because of information or because an event was taking place, such as a visiting dignitary—has to be subject to greater scrutiny and security and everyone, or every fifth person, has to be searched. One did not want to have the possibility of an individual police officer looking around and saying, ““I’m going to search that chap there””, because of the risk of discrimination in that. It may be that when my noble friend on the Cross Benches described the stopping of his son, it was because a police officer on a whim decided that here was a toff who looked like a Lord and that he would interfere with his going on his way. I do not know what the motivation was. But as regards the suggestion that politeness or giving a good reason would meet the problem, this is precisely where a policeman does not have to give a reason. The point of Section 44 is that no reason has to be given. It gives an incredibly new power to a police officer. For that reason, it should be used only in very special circumstances and in ways which are not discriminatory. This amendment attempts to put those limits back. There is clear evidence that police officers use it to select people without knowing full well that they will not be required to give a reason. That is the difficulty which we have to countenance.