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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I understand the point that my noble friend makes. There is a distinction between not having to have reasonable grounds of suspicion of an offence or whatever and making the stop; but there is then a distinction concerning what you say to the individual. In circumstances where you stop the person and say, ““We are stopping you because we are stopping one in five of the people going down this road””—I doubt whether that was the circumstance to which the noble Lord referred—people can understand that. Similarly, in wider cases of stop and search, if you say, ““We are stopping people with yellow anoraks with hoods over their heads, because someone has just been seen doing something, and you happen to have a yellow anorak with a hood over your head””, that again people can understand. They may still resent it, but it removes some of that sense of hurt. I am not trying to suggest that simply being polite and providing that sort of background reason is a sufficient guardian against abuse of the power. I am saying it is an important component, and one which police authorities will take extremely seriously.