Meeting of the Parliament 02 April 2014
Not at all. I have just come from a meeting with the police and the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner. We established through Parliament—by a majority in the chamber and not simply this Administration—a view that we should have a police authority that holds the chief constable to account. We have the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing to provide a challenge function because of the importance and in recognition of that national agency. We also have Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary. Therefore, we have established a situation in which there can be and must be review. We gave individuals and authorities challenging remits, and I believe that they are performing remarkably well.
In carrying out their duties, the chief constable and his officers have a clear policy on carrying out properly conducted and targeted stop and search operations. That is an important part of local policing; it targets problem issues and areas. It reassures communities and helps to prevent crime, particularly violent crime.
What is the effect of the policy? Stop and search is taking drugs, alcohol and weapons off our streets. More than 90 per cent of the searches are targeted at those areas, and around 20 per cent of all searches are successful, which is up 6 per cent from 2012-13.
What does that mean? It means that, between April and December, 4,273 weapons searches yielded a positive result, which accounts for 5 per cent of all weapon searches; that nearly 37 per cent of searches targeted to detect firearms yielded a positive result, which is 261 positive results; that, since 2006-07, crimes of handling an offensive weapon have dropped by 60 per cent; and that almost 37 per cent of alcohol-related searches were positive, which is 61,541 positive searched.