Member

Like the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, I am concerned about suspicionless stop and search. It is quite a blunt instrument. I am not saying that it does not have a place in the statute book. An obvious example is that when guests come to this Palace, they routinely go through a form of suspicionless stop and search by walking through airport-style security gates and having any bags searched. There is no room for concern or feelings of injustice there, because it is a high-security environment, everybody understands the risk to the Palace and those within it, and everybody is treated in the same way, so there is not this concern about arbitrary or discriminatory treatment. When, for example, under the Terrorism Act, or indeed under other statutes, a place of particular risk and sensitivity is identified in that way, you can see the beginnings of some justification for suspicionless stop and search. However, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, when he spoke in support of the amendment, he was almost justifying routine suspicionless stop and search. Why not just have it everywhere in England and Wales if it is so effective? The answer is that, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, said, if you make it too readily available and have too low a threshold, suspicionless stop and search at large will lead to arbitrary and discriminatory results and to a feeling of distrust between some communities—young black men in particular, but not exclusively—and the police.