Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But, as I write in the magazine this week, when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing violent crime on Tuesday, Boris Johnson took issue with what the Prime Minister regards as one of her key legacies: the dramatic reduction in stop and search. He argued that more stop and search was needed to deal with a spike in crime. What went unsaid — but what everyone around the cabinet table was acutely aware of — was that this was the opposite of May’s approach as Home Secretary.
As Home Secretary, May toughened up the rules around the police’s use of stop and search. In 2014, she said that the system was ‘unfair – especially for young black men’. At last year’s Tory conference, May claimed success. She said that following her changes, ‘the number of black people being stopped and searched has fallen by over two-thirds’.
Now, there are two things to note here. First, there’s a debate over whether stop and search really did disproportionately affect black people. Alasdair Palmer, who worked for May at the Home Office, claims that the department’s own research showed this not to be the case, once you adjusted for who was present on the streets when the police were stopping and searching. But he says May’s political team deliberately ignored this point. Second, there’s the fact that the dramatic fall in stop and search has coincided with a rise in crime. Figures out in January show a 14 per cent increase in police–recorded crime. Knife crime is up by even more, 21 per cent, as is gun crime, 20 per cent.
It is tempting to dismiss every difference between Boris Johnson and Theresa May as a clash of egos. But there is something more going on here. As one of those present on Tuesday puts it, ‘Boris thinks stop and search is the answer; she thinks she stopped a national scandal.’
Certainly, it is hard to see how the spike in violent crime – in London alone, eight people have been killed in stabbings or shootings since last Wednesday – can be addressed without an increase in stop and search. The tactic mustn’t be used in a heavy-handed manner. But the fall in its use, by three-quarters in under a decade, has clearly been excessive.
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