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Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

I am grateful to be called to speak in this important debate. I did not serve on the Committee, but I speak as a parent. Like many Members, I am appalled and heartbroken every time I see yet another mother or father—another family—mourning the loss of a child. It is not just the life of the child that is destroyed—gone, vanished—but many connected lives: brothers and sisters, friends, grandparents, mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles. It is a tragedy beyond compare when a young life is needlessly taken, which is why it is so important for us in this place to come together, not just today but every day, to try to reduce the incidence of such tragedies. I listened carefully to the speech of the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). He made some good points. A couple of weeks ago, I was pulled over by my police when I was with my daughter travelling back from the school play. We had bought a bag of doughnuts from Tesco and were on our way home when for no reason that I could see—although it was something to do with my driving—I was pulled over by a police car that had followed me for a mile and a half. I was angry and frightened—that is me, a middle-class Member of Parliament. When I recounted the story to a friend, he asked, ““How would you feel, Charles, if that was happening weekly or fortnightly and if you were black or Asian?”” I can tell the House that I would feel hurt, angry and embittered towards those subjecting me to such searches. That is why we need to be careful. We need to balance the interests of communities and the people who live in them with the interests of those who are stopped and searched.