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The Riots

Of course, serious issues remain for all police forces, particularly those policing urban areas, but at the heart of the discussion, as other hon. Members have said, is trust. I was a very young man and lawyer when the first round of debate about stop and search happened, and here we are—25 years later—still having that same debate. When will we put it to one side? Let us look at the figures. Young black people are stopped and searched at seven times the rate of young white people, and some are stopped at 27 times the rate of young white people, particularly where there is a section 60 order in place. There is a section 60 order in place in my constituency. That issue is very real. I am not suggesting that we should abandon stop and search. It seems to me that those who argue for the abandonment of stop and search need to stop and think. The No. 1 issue that young people are raising in London is knife crime, and against that backdrop of course we must have stop and search. It is patently obvious that to keep young people feeling safe on their way to and from school, we must stop and search, but we must do it intelligently and with a police force that the broader community trusts. That is why the figures that I have cited in relation to the ethnic minority profile of the police are so crucial. In addition, I am hugely critical of the decision effectively to downgrade stop and account, and stop and search. I still believe that when a police officer stops and searches someone, they should put down the name of the person that they stopped and they should certainly put down whether there has been any injury or damage as a consequence. I sat on the delegated legislation Committee dealing with the changes to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 code and stop and search, and I listened to the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice make arguments about bureaucracy, but I say to the Government that those are precisely the issues that undercut trust in the fact that stop and search can be done intelligently. That is leading to real antagonism among young men, particularly young black men in London. I have been stopped and searched. I was stopped and searched during the last general election.