My Lords, I wish to speak on Amendments 74 and 78, which relate to Clauses 41 and 42. Since this House last considered the driving offence and powers set out in the Bill, the Minister has, as he promised, engaged with me and others who expressed deep concern about the impact of these provisions. I thank him for that but I must tell him that the additional commitments made by the Government have left me feeling far from reassured.
The addition of a defence to the Clause 42 offence is welcome, as strict-liability offences can cause serious injustice, but this move will do nothing to reduce the practical discriminatory impact of these proposals. The discrimination will occur before a case reaches the police station or the court-room. It will occur on our roads and in our houses. That is where the damage will be done.
The provision of guidance on the use of these powers is not enough. Guidance exists around the use of current stop-and-search powers, such as the power set out in Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but statistics produced by the
Met show that this power is still used disproportionately against black people. There is a time for guidance and a time for a wholesale rejection of a proposal because it is simply too harmful. In my opinion, the driving offence and the related powers in this Bill fall firmly into the latter category.
Finally, the Government offer a pilot evaluation of the implementation of the search powers set out in Clause 41. I am afraid that this does not fill me with confidence, given the experience of the right-to-rent pilot evaluation: the sample was too small and was unrepresentative, and the evidence of discrimination that it ultimately produced was ignored by the Government.
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The issue of traffic stops, and the decision by this Government to link them intrinsically to immigration inquiries, goes right to the heart of police/community relations in this country—and not just in this country. I refer to an incident in Ferguson, Missouri, where huge numbers of African-Americans took to the streets following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager. While the shooting unquestionably led to the mass unrest that followed, background grievances had accumulated over decades, poisoning police/community relations. According to a report produced by the office of the Missouri Attorney-General, Chris Koster, while black residents account for 67% of the Ferguson population, black drivers accounted for more than 86% of traffic stops made last year by the Ferguson Police Department. This fact has not been lost on the US media, which reported on the link between anger caused by this consistent marginalisation and the fragile, unstable state of relations between the police and Ferguson’s black population.
In addition to the HMRC statistics published in 2014, figures produced by StopWatch show the scale of the problem in this country. From its analysis of British Crime Survey data produced in 2008 and 2011, StopWatch found that black and ethnic-minority drivers consistently reported higher levels of car stops: 33% of people with mixed black and white ethnicities reported being stopped; for both the black Caribbean and Asian Muslim communities the figure is 18%; for white drivers, the figure is just 11%. We already have lax stop powers on the statute book which allow individuals to be stopped without reason. Yet rather than working to address the discriminatory reality of this provision, the Government seek to tie this power to the immigration system, creating the obvious potential to ramp up discriminatory impacts and inflame existing grievances. I oppose Clauses 41 and 42: they should not be part of this Bill.