Stops and Searches (Hansard, 16 July 2001)

§ Mr. Denham

Since the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, code of practice (A) on stop and search, all stops and searches carried out under any legislative provision have been recorded. In 1999–2000, 818,203 such stops and searches were recorded.

Stops and searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 are not included in the above figure and are recorded separately. There were 7,153 such searches in 1999–2000.

Since code of practice (A) was last revised in 1999, the Lawrence steering group set up to take forward the Home Secretary's action plan in response to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report, has agreed that all persons searched should be given a copy of the record at the time of the search together with information on police powers and public rights. This does not represent an extra recording requirement and simply means that the record is routinely made available at the time of the search rather than within 12 months as was previously the practice. The group agreed that this should also apply where stops are carried out without there being any subsequent search because grounds for suspicion are eliminated as a result of questioning the person detained. It is not possible to predict exactly how many extra records this might entail, but it is not likely to be significant in terms of the overall number of records. Chief constables were requested to implement those new arrangements from 1 April 2001.

We are also considering whether to accept recommendation 61 of the Lawrence inquiry that all stops should be recorded, whether or not a search takes place. A public consultation exercise on that by local police authorities, co-ordinated by the Association of Police Authorities, finished at the end of May. I expect the Lawrence steering group to consider the results of that consultation exercise in July.