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Terrorism Act 2000 (Remedial) Order 2011

My Lords, we all know about the sensitivity of stop and search, and any improvement in the way that it is carried out—as is represented by this remedial order—is all to the good. However, I have one or two questions based upon my membership of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said that the searches would not be random. Am I right in thinking that in the code of practice there are references to random searches? The JCHR was anxious that those references be removed and that the code of practice be devised so that the stop could be, "““justified by the precise nature of the intelligence about the threat””." Rather than the searches being random there would have to be some intelligence because the order would clearly not be applied unless there was some background knowledge of this sort. It would be desirable to remove the word ““random”” from the code of practice. In another report of the JCHR, we suggested that the code of practice be modified to: "““Require the authorising officer to have a reasonable basis for his belief as to the necessity of the authorisation and to provide an explanation of those reasons””." These would not be large changes, but I wonder whether we might urge that the code of practice be looked at again. Police officers need all the guidance that they possibly can have in dealing with very sensitive situations. We all know that certain communities will feel that they are more targeted than others—notwithstanding the experience of the noble Baroness—and I should have thought that we ought to look again at the code of practice to make sure that it reflects exactly what we want it to reflect and gives our police officers on the street the maximum support for the way they behave.