New Clause 12 - Recording of encounters not governed by statutory powers
Police and Justice Bill
1:00 pm
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The purpose of new clause 12 is to precipitate debate on a matter that is controversial and sensitive but that should none the less be discussed—the requirement placed on the police since the Macpherson report to record every stop that they make. That requirement does not apply every time that the police engage in a general conversation with the member of the public, but it does apply when a police officer requests someone to stop to account for themselves. A large number of interactions with the public are therefore covered by the provision. Although I understand that national figures for the number of stops made and recorded under the new provisions are not yet available, as the provisions have been in place for only 17 months, we know that police in the Metropolitan police area make 30,000 stops-and-searches or stops-and-accounts every month.
I emphasise that my new clause, which aims to end the requirement to record every stop, does not apply to stops-and-searches. It is generally agreed that a search is intrusive and that it is important that police officers record them. However, it would apply to stops alone.
My concerns fall into two categories. The first is that the relevant form is very long. The Minister will be familiar with it, but I do not know whether other Committee members are. I am sure that the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green is. It contains 40 questions and takes about seven minutes to fill in, according to the Police Federation. The reason for the stop, the outcome and the self-defined ethnicity of the person stopped must be included in it. According to the Home Office, the average police officer stops someone and completes one of the forms every 2.2 hours that they spend outside a police station. That creates a time issue. If a police officer wishes to make a number of stops, that means that he could be engaged in filling in forms for a long time. The practical effect is that he will probably be deterred from making the stops in the first place.
My second concern relates to the extent to which the bureaucracy that recording will generate prevents the police from encountering people and requiring them to stop. How robust is the system? To what extent are police officers being deterred from making stops? Stopping people is precisely what we wish them to do in neighbourhood policing.