Race Relations (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:30 pm on 11 January 2000.

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Photo of Earl Russell Earl Russell Liberal Democrat 4:30, 11 January 2000

The concept of indirect discrimination was summarised clearly by Oscar Wilde: one such accident might happen to anyone; but two savours of carelessness.

Here we come to the pertinent question raised by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow. Is it simply crass and incompetent policing or is it indirect discrimination? That is a question that must be put to a statistical test. If one part of the population is far more at risk of meeting incompetent and crass policemen than another part of the population, that, in practice, amounts to indirect discrimination.

Anyone who dies in police custody may be suspected to have met, at the best, crass and incompetent policemen. But the fact that people who are black are five times as likely to die in police custody as people who are white, must create at least a suspicion that there may be indirect discrimination involved. A person who is stopped and searched may simply be stopped and searched by misfortune or at random. But a couple of years ago--though I believe the figures are now a little better--one was seven times as likely to be stopped and searched in London if one was black than if one was white. That again must at least suggest the possibility of indirect discrimination.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, referred to the stopping last week of Mr Neville Lawrence. Mr Lawrence made what I thought was an extremely sensible and level-headed comment on that. He said, "If the police had a description of a suspect at least vaguely matching my appearance, fair enough. If not, I would be rather worried". That seems to me to go to the heart of the whole issue.

We in this House are in a peculiarly good position to comment on this matter. The central evil here is police stereotyping. I rise as the third noble Lord in succession who has a story about having been stopped by the police. I was driving David Starkey home after agreeing marks on exam papers, driving through the back end of Islington rather slowly because I did not know the way. I was stopped by the police who clearly suspected we were on a drugs run. They asked me my name and address. I said, "My name is Russell and I live in Kilburn". It did not appear to reassure them. Then David Starkey, with his very highest moral tone, said, "This is Professor Russell; Professor the Earl Russell, and he is driving me home"; and the police reacted precisely as they did with the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick. But I mean no more disrespect to the other two noble Lords than I do to myself when I say that Earls are no more incapable of crime than other men; even on past history Earls Russell are no more incapable of crime than other men.

That sort of stereotyping leads police away from making judgments on the particular facts of the case. We see one side of the coin; they see the other. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, had the extremely interesting experience of seeing both sides of the coin at once. My point is that this is a bad coin; that this sort of stereotyping leads people away from evidence. If legislation can induce police to consider people as individuals and not simply as members of a category, whether favoured or disfavoured, that will be to our advantage.

I wish to make just one more point before I sit down. It is extremely dangerous in any body politic to have the idea getting around that the police, or indeed any other public authority, represent one part of the community at the expense of the other. That tends to bring enforcement of law into disrepute and makes keeping the peace difficult. I shall not go on about that point; it will be before us a good deal when we come to consider the Patten report on Northern Ireland. I do not want to have those problems either on the mainland or in London. By accepting this amendment, we will do something very much needed to avoid them.