My Lords, this amendment is also in the names of my noble friend Lady Sheehan and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon. We also have Amendment 78 in this group. I spoke on these issues in Committee, and the Minister has
subsequently written to noble Lords on the issues raised both in Committee and at a meeting with the Minister and officials on 22 February.
In essence, these clauses create a new offence of driving when unlawfully in the UK, powers to detain the motor vehicle being driven by someone committing such an offence, including powers to enter premises to seize the vehicle, and powers to dispose of the vehicle on conviction. In addition, there are powers to enter and search premises, and to search an individual and a vehicle in order to seize and retain a driving licence if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person has a driving licence and is not lawfully in the UK.
Noble Lords will recall my concern and the concern of other noble Lords that these provisions were likely to change a dynamic in police/community relations because of something that was abandoned decades ago when the police decided not to be proactive in enforcing immigration law because of the seriously damaging impact it was having on police/community relations. Clearly, the police will inform immigration authorities if someone who has been arrested for a criminal offence is suspected of being illegally in the UK, so that immigration officers can take the necessary action. But the days of police officers arresting black drivers on the spurious grounds that they were suspected of being an overstayer had, I hoped, thankfully been consigned to the history books.
My concern and the concern of other noble Lords who spoke in Committee, and the concern of the National Black Police Association, is that these clauses will take us back to the bad old days of poor police/race relations. The National Black Police Association says:
“The potential impact of this legislation will be an undermining of community cohesion and a stirring up of hatred and suspicion between different racial and religious groups … and will result in the police becoming the whipping boy for the immigration service”.
Those are not the words of what some people might regard as an out-of-date, out-of-touch former police officer but the views of an organisation representing currently serving police officers.
I am very grateful to the Minister for meeting with me and other noble Lords, and for writing on these issues. I regret to say that his letter on the subject raises more questions than answers. First, the Minister says that the Home Office will consult publicly on the draft guidance. Can he say whether there will be parliamentary scrutiny of such guidance? The letter goes on to say that these clauses do not provide the police with any new power to stop people or vehicles. That is true, but it gives new powers to search an individual, a vehicle or the person’s home address without a warrant, as well as creating a new criminal offence.
The letter goes on to say:
“The Government has made clear that no one should be stopped on the basis of their race or ethnicity; this would be unlawful under the Equality Act”.
I remind the Minister of the survey commissioned by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, published in March last year, where 10,094 members of the public were asked whether they had been stopped by the police while driving in the previous two years.
Between 7% and 8% of white drivers who responded said that they had, whereas 10% to 14% of black drivers who responded said that they had been stopped in their vehicles.
Black drivers were more likely not to be told the reason for the stop and were less likely to be arrested or prosecuted. This is how the police use their existing power to stop motor vehicles. Black drivers were almost twice as likely to be stopped and were less likely to have done anything wrong. The exercise of the power to stop vehicles under Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act is not recorded by the police, so, apart from the HMIC survey, we have no idea how disproportionate the use of this power against black and other minority ethnic people is.
The Minister in his letter goes on to talk about the fall in stop and search in 2014-15 compared with 2013-14. He states:
“The number of stops on those of black ethnicity has fallen at a faster rate than stops on those who were white”.
First, motorists stopped under Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act are not included in the stop-and-search figures, as I have already said. Secondly, according to the Institute of Race Relations, in 2014:
“Black people specifically are 4.2 times as likely as white people to be stopped and searched by the police”.
It also reports that 86% of stop and searches did not lead to an arrest.
Does the Minister seriously expect the House to be relaxed about giving the police even more powers to search people and their homes and to arrest people for driving while illegally in the UK because the Home Office will issue guidance and because to discriminate against black and other minority ethnic people would be unlawful under the Equality Act?
In his letter the Minister goes on to say that,
“the police will use the powers contained in clauses 41 and 42 where they have stopped a vehicle for an objective reason”.
The HMIC survey and the stop-and-search survey suggest that the police are stopping black people driving vehicles and stopping and searching black people for no objective reason—“for a reason other than race and ethnicity” is a more accurate description than “objective”.
I know from 30 years in the police service that you can do anything to Elvis Presley apart from tread on his blue suede shoes, and you can accuse the police of anything except racism. What did the Government expect Chief Superintendent Dave Snelling to say to the Public Bill Committee other than that the police would not abuse this power?
The letter goes on:
“A search of premises for a driving licence can only be carried out where: ‘The officer has reasonable grounds for believing that a person is in possession of a driving licence and is not lawfully resident’. In practice, this would require the police to perform a check with the Home Office”.
All the evidence that we have to date points to the fact that this is what should happen in theory and not what will happen in practice.
The Home Secretary has done a lot of good work on stop and search, but clearly a lot more needs to be done if you are still over four times as likely to be
stopped and searched if you are black than if you are white. All the evidence, including a survey by HMIC, shows that the police cannot yet be trusted to do what the Government “make clear”, even when their actions are unlawful under the Equality Act. All the evidence indicates that the police are not yet ready, despite baby steps in the right direction, to be given more search powers and a power to arrest drivers suspected of being illegally in the UK. The fact that these powers are focused around immigration means that they are even more likely than general stop-and-search powers to be used disproportionately against the black and minority ethnic community.
Liberal Democrats want effective border security to prevent illegal immigrants coming into the UK in the first place, effective exit checks so that we know when someone has overstayed their visa, and an effective immigration service that tracks down overstayers and others who are working in the UK illegally. These are all the responsibility of the Immigration Service. The police have already suffered significant cuts to their budgets and community policing has been hit hard. They have a front-line role in liaising with communities to build the kind of trust and confidence that leads to vital information about serious crime and terrorism being passed on to them by the public. Anything that is likely to put them in conflict with the public, and with black and minority ethnic communities in particular, will make us all less safe. That is exactly what this legislation is likely to do.
I am not making this point from a politically motivated point of view; this is an honestly held, personal belief based on my experience of policing and my knowledge of police culture. I have great respect for colleagues in the police service, who put their lives on the line to keep us safe every day, but these are serious issues that need to be addressed. I beg the Minister to reconsider these draconian clauses. Restrict the powers to immigration officers if you must, but please do not drag the police back to the bad old days when I was a constable on the beat. I beg to move.