Crime and Security Bill

I have given way once. Let us move on. Over the past few years, we have made huge efforts to cut police bureaucracy. Thirty-six data collection requirements have been either removed or significantly reduced. Scrapping activity-based costing alone has saved around 260,000 hours of police time. The foot-long stop-and-account form has gone, saving another 690,000 hours. The Bill will advance that agenda by significantly reducing the length of the stop-and-search form. Under current legislation, when the police stop and search a suspect, they have to record the person's name—or a description, if the person refuses to give their name—the details of any vehicle stopped and whether any injury or damage to property has been caused, even though the question is not applicable in the vast majority of cases. Under the proposals outlined in the Bill, the police will still be required to record the date, time and place of the stop. Officers will also continue to record the ethnicity of the person involved. It will still be possible to monitor the police's use of stop-and-search both locally and nationally, and to hold them to account accordingly, but without the added burden of the unnecessary and time-consuming requirements of the current form.