My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 90G, 90H and 90J, but I will concentrate on Amendment 90G. I declare an interest: when I was a vicar in Tulse Hill, south London—I was there for 14 years—I was stopped and searched a number of times. I asked the police why, particularly when I did not have my dog collar on because I had gone to B&Q to get some paint to decorate our house. They said that they wanted to make sure that the tins of paint had not been stolen. I had to produce a receipt. I was then let go, but there were other occasions; it was not just a one-off.
I then became the Bishop of Stepney. I had been there for only about 18 months when, one evening, having taken my wife to a selection conference, on my way back, at about 10 pm, on that wonderful hill in London, I was stopped and searched. The man wanted me to open my boot, which I did. As I stood up, he suddenly saw my dog collar and purple shirt and said, “Whoops”.
I was an adviser to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. By the way, it was not the Macpherson inquiry, as people tend to call it. If you look at the book, you will see that it was the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, who died last year.
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We said that stop and search is a useful tool, but it must be used when the police have evidence—when there are a lot of people around in the community who will tell you, “So-and-so has done this”. Community intelligence was necessary; that is why we recommended it. The words were that you stop and search somebody on “reasonable grounds”, but the issue is that it depends
on who is judging the reasonableness of it. If you said to the likes of me that I must use reasonable grounds—because I was stopped and searched a number of times—I would be bound to err on the side of “Well, give them what-for”. Language does not always mean the same things to every person. I can see why the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is trying to introduce “beyond reasonable doubt” instead of “reasonable”, because, after all, we are talking about prevention of a crime, so the standard has got to very high. If we were to use this very strong expression, “beyond reasonable doubt”, it is quite possible that the police woman or man who is trying to stop and search somebody would think about whether it was really reasonable for it to be done, whereas at the moment, people of my hue have been stopped without any reasonable grounds whatever.
The problem is not that there has not been enough training or enough work; it is just that it is one of those things that you do. Not all police officers have got it in for black people—it would be ridiculous to suggest that that was so; I have come across some wonderful people—but the way in which the language is used does not help. I said to somebody who asked me why I left law, “Maybe, it is like when somebody opens a shop and they put you in charge of the money. God, in order to prevent me putting my hand in the till, put me where there is a lot of light everywhere, so that people can see what I am doing”. That is why I became a clergyman, to prevent me doing even worse things. All of us are liable, friends, to do the sort of things that we know we ought not to be doing. When you are given a uniform, it gives you power. Stop and search has gone wrong—I insist that it is still a very good tool—because this reasonableness stuff for some is not reasonable; they just assume, and it creates difficulty within the community.
For those reasons, I support the amendment. It would stop every police officer and require them to think about whether they have gone “beyond reasonable doubt”. It is better to get the community working with you instead of you feeling that they do not want you to do whatever you are doing. Community policing is at the hub of it; intelligence is necessary; stop and search is a useful tool, but, at the moment, the language used does not stop people doing that which they know instinctively they ought not to be doing.