TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, enters into the stop and search debate and warns against the perils of playing politics in this arena. 

One spring day in April 1981 my mother popped down to Brixton with her little toddlers, to do a spot of shopping. Little did she know what was about to unfold; as the tension mounted and the violence started, she literally sprinted to our car with her two bundles of joy – my sister in her pushchair and me on foot – and fled. She still talks with relief about how she knew the various side roads out of the area, enabling us to make that quick exit more than 20 years ago.

You see, when Conservative leader David Cameron seeks to kick about the stop and search issue as if it were just another political football, this is the arena into which he is lobbing it. It is common currency that it was the disproportionate use of stop and search powers by the police then, in addition to the deprivation which many in urban Britain suffered under Margaret Thatcher, that led to the riots that spring day.

Unlike Cameron, it appears that history has not been lost on Sir Ronnie Flanagan, whose report into policing is published today. Yes, things are different now. The police are not so “gung-ho” in the use of their powers and we have different issues, the number of violent murders of young people in London last year among them. But Flanagan has recognised the need to ensure the police command the respect of all communities given his proposal to retain the “stop and search” form to demonstrate accountability, particularly to ethnic minorities, though he sensibly acknowledges procedures need to be streamlined through the use of modern technology. No doubt his experience in Northern Ireland has informed his outlook.

The Tory leader, on the other hand, has adopted a completely different approach. In his interview in the Sun last week, we were told how he “sees the effects of the violent crime explosion as he cycles to the Commons” from his home in Notting Hill. No doubt he stops every now and then to talk to the locals on his way. Cameron would have us believe that his finger is on the pulse of urban Britain, while Gordon Brown doesn’t recognise the problems. So what did he propose? “Freeing” the police to do “far more stopping and far more searching,” without which we are not going to be able to deal with the current problems, he says. He wants to do away with accountability measures, such as the forms, which were introduced to ensure the police use their stop and search powers properly:

“In the British police service there were problems with racism, there were problems with attitude. That needed to change, I think it has now been changed. I am quite clear the current rules have to go.”

He conveniently forgets the numerous deaths of black people in police custody, like Michael Powell in 2003, and the dreadful reports of racism in police training centres such as those in Hendon and Cheshire since the publication of the Macpherson report, which found institutional racism to be rife in the Metropolitan police.

Listen to Cameron and you would think that stop and search in our inner cities was a rarity. You are six times more likely to be stopped and searched as a black person. Indeed, the Home Affairs select committee, in its report into young black people and the criminal justice system last year, found that young black people were 14.4 times more likely to be stopped in some London boroughs. No matter that the proportion of searches resulting in arrests under the most commonly used statutory power – to stop and search people carrying prohibited or stolen goods and offensive weapons on the basis of “reasonable suspicion” – is just 11%.

Of course, Cameron’s intervention has nothing to do with evidence-based policy making and everything to do with political positioning and headline-grabbing. Let us be clear what he is trying to do: his aim is to outflank the prime minister by talking tough on law and order in an effort to appeal middle Britain. He is literally playing politics with the deaths of predominantly young black people in our inner cities to garner support with the “Worcester woman”, “Sierra man” and all the “pebbledash” people. If I am wrong, why the big interview in the Sun of all places, and why the use of this issue to goad the prime minister at the weekly joke that is PMQs last week? Why not have a more sober discussion at one of those policy seminars he has taken to inviting the press to.

The Tory leader’s behaviour is distasteful in the extreme and Brown should have none of it. Instead, he should put what is happening on our streets into some kind of context and give us some of that elusive narrative. Part of the reason young people are getting involved with gangs, leading to the use of guns and knives, is not the lack of stop and search but the individualistic, consumerist society we live in. There is a plethora of research which shows that young people spend too much time with each other and not enough time with adults, which is why the gang is so alluring. Adults work longer and longer hours to earn more and more money, to consume more and keep up in our treadmill economy. It is little wonder that 37% of our 10-year-olds are shooting each other on computer games for more than three hours every day and 34% of our secondary school-aged children return home from school to an empty house; we are too busy doing other things.

Stop and search has its place but until we start addressing these deeper cultural issues, no amount of sabre-rattling on the part of politicians is going to resolve these pressing problems.

Chuka Umunna is editor of TMP.