Macpherson Report: 20th Anniversary — House of Commons, 2019-02-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I agree that there is more work to be done. Chief Constable Jon Boutcher also said that race was continually at the heart of the biggest issues facing policing. He spoke about the disproportional over-targeting of black people for stop-and-search purposes which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), about knife crime, about female genital mutilation, about honour-based violence, about modern slavery and about terrorism. He said: "Race is at the core of so much, we should always have race as a priority regarding representation and community confidence. Race has not continued to be the priority that it should have over the last 25 years." That was said by a chief constable, not by some dangerous black radical There has been progress, and the narrative is different now. Phrases such as "institutional racism" can be used, and people understand what they mean. The phrase "institutional racism" does not imply that every single individual in an individual in an institution is racist; it means that there are ways in which a certain institution works. However, there has not been enough progress. People forget that after Macpherson, police chiefs from the 43 forces in England and Wales agreed on a Government target: there must be the same proportion of black officers in their ranks as in the community that they served. They were given a decade in which to achieve that, but none of them ever did so My hon. Friends have identified a number of issues that arise from any consideration of Macpherson, such as the use of the gangs matrix, in which young black men are disproportionately racially profiled, and the use of stop and search. Labour Members believe in evidence-based stop and search, but its random use has done more to exacerbate bad relationships between the police and the community than anything else. We continue to insist that evidence-based stop and search is one thing, but random stop and search is another. It is all too easy for politicians so say, in the face of a crime wave, "Let us have more stop and search", but we must insist on its being evidence-based. My hon. Friends have spoken about the importance of recruiting more policemen of colour, the issue being that members of police forces should look like the communities that they serve. There is also the long-standing issue of the promotion possibilities for black policemen Macpherson was probably one of the most important events in my lifetime in the context of the debate about race. It has changed the way in which we talk about race, particularly in relation to policing. It is a tribute to Doreen Lawrence for her tenacity, her courage and her persistence that we ever had a Macpherson inquiry. However, there is more to do. We cannot be complacent. Because race is at the heart of many of the issues involved in policing and community safety, we need to look again at those recommendations and proceed with their implementation The Macpherson inquiry threw down a gauntlet to society about race. We must pick up that gauntlet, and fulfil the promise of that important inquiry.