Downing Street Says » Stop and Search

» Friday, July 2, 2004

Stop and Search

Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned about the latest statistics which showed a rise in the number of Asians who had been targeted by police under the Government’s stop-and-search policy, the PMS said that both Hazel Blears and Baroness Scotland had been expressing the views of the Prime Minister and the Government on this issue this morning. Our commitment to race equality was as strong as ever. The imbalance illustrated by the figures today was unacceptable. That was why the Home Office had decided to set up a new unit – the Stop and Search Action Team – which would look at how the powers were used. It would also work with police forces to address the concerns around this policy. Put to her that the police had pointed out that the increase was due to the fact that they had been instructed to do what they could to avoid terrorist actions in the UK, the PMS acknowledged that the powers under the Terrorism Act were linked in with today’s figures. However, it was important to recognise that they were dealt with in a different way to stop-and-search powers. For example, section 44 of the Terrorism Act stated that permission had to be granted by a Chief Police Officer before an arrest was made in a specific operation that had been undertaken.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

July 2004

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

« Jun

Aug »

» Friday, July 2, 2004

Stop and Search

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries