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Mr. Stephen Twigg (Enfield, Southgate): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Howarth: I shall not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I do not intend any discourtesy, but I have already spoken for 14 minutes and I do not want to speak for too long.
Let us consider the case of PC Steven Hutt, which was the subject of a big article in The Daily Telegraph the Saturday before last. He was dismissed from the police service because, in a lapse of self-discipline, which he acknowledges, he said to a lad who had been arrested:
The black mother of the youth believes that the sentence is disproportionate, as does the Police Federation. PC Hutt is being made a scapegoat for the Government's policy of trying to instil a rather crude form of political correctness in our police force. The article states:
I thank the hon. Member for Witney, who did me one service. He saved me from having to repeat some of the points that I made a year ago by quoting extensively from my speech. I hope that he will be pleased to know that I stand by every word, and shall continue to do so.
The Bill springs from an ideological desire for every institution to be a microcosm of society. It will damage the effectiveness of policing in this country. We expect our armed services to defend our country and not act as a crucible for social experimentation. The job of the police is not to act as a microcosm or reflection of society. It is the police service's job to enforce the law, and the job of our armed forces to fight for this country.
Fiona Mactaggart:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Howarth:
Although the hon. Lady shares a birthday with me, and her father was a great man, I shall not give way to her.
My real fear is that the Bill will be a licence to anyone subjected to stop and search or any other intervention by the police to complain that they have been picked on--discriminated against--because of the colour of their skin. That will result in a tidal wave of complaints. The Home Secretary made it clear that he differentiates between such complaints and charges that the police may level against the individual concerned, but we shall nevertheless find our courts clogged up with a whole load of cases because complainants will not have much to lose. He is living in cloud cuckoo land if he is not prepared to acknowledge that. If the Bill becomes law, it will provide complainants with the means by which to accuse the police of having acted in a racist fashion.
The Bill will have an adverse effect on police morale and recruitment. I do not have the figures for Hendon, but I hope that the Minister will tell us how recruiting is going. I understand that not many recruits are coming forward--certainly not enough to meet the 1,000 shortfall in Metropolitan police numbers in London.
The Macpherson report made one interesting comment with which I agree. On page 316, it says:
Mr. Stephen Twigg:
It is self-evident.
Mr. Howarth:
It is not self-evident, because racism is always perceived to be one way. Before I refer to remarks made by Sir Herman Ouseley, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, I want to point out that, as well as a flood of claims, a serious cost to the Exchequer will arise from the proposals. The explanatory notes, which the Government have kindly provided, set out a whole series of costs on page 13. There
I am not only against the Bill. Personally, I should like all the race relations legislation to be removed from the statute book. [Hon. Members: "Disgraceful."] Hon. Members may say that, but I do not believe that it serves any useful effect, save to stir up trouble. By and large, I believe in a less regulated society. I certainly oppose the measure and I should have been happier if the race relations legislation--
Mr. Howarth:
If the hon. Gentleman does not know that he is obviously not very well informed.
Mr. Mike O'Brien:
The hon. Gentleman presents himself as a defender of the police, but I suspect that the vast majority of officers--good and decent people who work for us--would be appalled by his views on the race relations legislation. I want to place it on record that I think that they would dissociate themselves from his position.
Mr. Howarth:
The Minister is frightfully excited about that. I dare say that some policemen disagree with me, but others may agree. We live in a free society and I am expressing a view. I cannot see anything outrageous in suggesting that we should remove a degree of regulation.
Let me finish by quoting the views of Sir Herman Ouseley, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality--an organisation that has itself been riven by internal feuding between the West Indian and Asian
communities. That organisation, which claims to be able to represent the interests of good race relations, was consumed by such problems for months, if not years.
According to Melanie Philips, in an article in The Sunday Times in December 1998, Sir Herman rejected the
Mr. Stephen Twigg (Enfield, Southgate):
It is a privilege to speak in the debate.
I am sure that, if my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward) had any doubts about the wisdom of crossing the Floor, listening to what we have all just heard has dispelled any that remained. I hope that the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) will take the opportunity to repudiate the remarks of the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), and to condemn them as being unacceptable in his party.
The hon. Gentleman painted a scary picture of the possible impact of the Bill, and spoke of cloud cuckoo land. I wanted to point out that he was condemning something that already applies in the private sector and has applied for the past 25 years, but--having not taken my intervention--he answered my point by saying that he did not think it should have applied during that time, and that people should not have such protection in any sector. I think that that view will be widely condemned by his constituents, and by people throughout the country.
Along with speakers in all parts of the House, including Conservatives--particularly the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd)--I welcome the Bill. We face great challenges as a Parliament, and Government face great challenges in building an inclusive society. We must ourselves challenge bigotry, prejudice and discrimination. We must ensure that people's life chances are determined on the basis of their merit rather than their background, the colour of their skin or their ethnic origin.
As others have said today, the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Lawrence family's struggle for justice shine a light for all of us who seek to get the law right. Everyone, I hope, can empathise with the sense of injustice, the suffering and the pain experienced by Neville and Doreen Lawrence. The British people responded positively and constructively to the courage and dignity shown by Mrs. Lawrence, a mother who had
lost her son in tragic and terrible circumstances, and Mr. Lawrence, a father who, although his son had been murdered, could not secure justice from the system.
Like many others, my constituency in suburban north London has a rich ethnic and cultural diversity. It contains a long-established and vibrant Jewish community, the largest number of Cypriots--both Greek and Turkish--outside Cyprus, a significant and growing Asian community and many people from African and Caribbean backgrounds. My constituents see that diversity as a source of great strength and opportunity for our local community. Overwhelmingly, there is acceptance and, indeed, celebration of that diversity. It is a community in harmony.
Tragically, however, that harmony sometimes breaks down. Last autumn, Abdul Osman, an 18-year-old black student at Southgate college, was killed in Southgate. Michael Menson was murdered in the neighbouring constituency of Edmonton. I have spoken in the Chamber about events in the Oakwood ward of my constituency, where a small group of white youths conducted a sustained campaign of racist harassment, directed mostly against the Asian community, but also against the local Jewish community. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary took the opportunity of visiting my constituency to meet some of the families and business people who had been affected by that campaign of racist harassment.
That is a good example of where harassment can be tackled. The various local agencies--the police, local authority, local schools, as well as the people themselves in that area--came together through the Enfield racial incidents action group and the Oakwood focus group to examine ways of tackling both the causes of racist crime and the racist crime itself. As a consequence, the latest statistics from that part of my constituency show a significant fall in its incidence.
It is salutary to remember that the full weight of race relations legislation does not apply to the public sector, yet we already see some good examples of excellent practice, as I have described, including in the police. The former Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, who in the 1950s and 1960s was a consultant in the House to the Police Federation of England and Wales and, later, the Home Secretary when the race relations legislation was going through, has made the point that has been made by many hon. Members: the police should never have been exempted from the legislation. The Bill is welcome, but it should have been introduced 25 years ago.
As other hon. Members have said, it is worth reminding ourselves of the Britain of the 1960s and 1970s--a Britain in which hotels had signs saying, "No dogs, no Irish, no Blacks", where north London golf clubs regularly excluded Jewish people from membership, and where pubs and shops could and did refuse to serve people simply on the basis of the colour of their skin.
I remember as a 10-year-old in the mid-1970s going with my parents to demonstrate against the National Front as it marched through the streets of multi-racial north London, seeking to spread its message of hate and division. Looking at the debates in Hansard on earlier race relations legislation, I find it shocking to read the arguments that were used. Perhaps it is less shocking when we realise that they are still used today, as we have
heard--arguments that, generally, would be regarded as unacceptable in 2000 when considering race, although such language is regularly used in the House of Commons and, more particularly, in the other place when Parliament discusses discrimination on the ground of sexuality.
The Race Relations Act has had a powerful impact in shaping public attitudes. I do not believe that any hon. Member has asserted what was implied by the hon. Member for Aldershot--that changing legislation will in itself change conditions and determine people's attitudes. The process is far more sophisticated and complicated. I believe firmly that legislation can and has made a difference. Progress over the past 25 to 30 years has been real, but we still have a long way to go.
Institutional racism is not a term that was invented by Macpherson. It was not referred to only in the light of the Stephen Lawrence case. There is nothing new about the concept. The report of Lord Scarman's inquiry, which was set up following the disturbances in Brixton almost 20 years ago, addressed institutional racism. It said:
The Bill is too late for the Lawrence family. It is too late for the family of Michael Menson. It is too late for the other families to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Witney referred. I am not saying that, had the Bill been in place 25 years ago, those tragedies would not have happened; they may well still have happened. However, if the Race Relations Acts had covered the public sector from the outset, we might have had the type of sea-change in institutions, such as the police and other public bodies, that we are now starting to witness. The culture of institutional racism could have been challenged, and families such as the Lawrence and Menson families could have been relieved of having to go through the additional burden of having to fight for justice when they were having to cope with bereavement. That is the point of the Bill.
Like other hon. Members on both sides of the House, I welcome the shift announced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to cover indirect as well as direct discrimination. However, I shall not deal at length with that matter, as other hon. Members have done so in full detail. I have no doubt, however, that discrimination today is more subtle and sophisticated than it was 20 or 30 years ago. We are less likely to see the overt differential practice and treatment that various speakers have mentioned, but we are more likely to see requirements created, the outcomes of which in practice disadvantage ethnic minorities. When those requirements cannot be justified, surely it is our duty to make them unlawful. That, I believe, is what indirect discrimination is all about.
If we were not to address indirect discrimination, we would be failing to meet the challenge set by the Macpherson report to extend the full force of race relations legislation. There is also a good case to be made that we would be creating a recipe for legal confusion and unnecessary complexity. The distinctions between direct and indirect discrimination are not always clear or simple--legal experts in the sphere of discrimination
themselves often disagree about whether something constitutes direct or indirect discrimination. My fear is that, if we took only the half step forward and extended provisions to cover only direct discrimination by public bodies, we would be failing those members of the public who are seeking a legal remedy to correct a civil wrong.
Like other hon. Members, I very much welcome the proposal to amend the Bill to create a positive duty on public authorities. That follows similar provisions in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and in the legislation creating the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, as well as in the legislation establishing the Greater London Authority. It builds on widespread existing good practice, some of which I have already mentioned, and it has been widely welcomed not only by the Commission for Racial Equality, but by the Confederation of Indian Organisations, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Runnymede Trust.
The creation of such a duty is an essential further step if we are truly to root out all the forms of racism that disfigure and divide our country. I very much hope that, in Committee, the Government will ensure that that positive duty is clearly and explicitly enshrined in the Bill.
As other hon. Members have said, the Commission for Racial Equality has made the point to Members of Parliament that the Government should consult on the details of the operation, monitoring and enforcement of those new provisions once the legislation is amended.
Excellent work is already being done in schools and community organisations across the country. The Bill is not imposing something new or alien, but simply building on existing good practice in many parts of the country. I believe that its provisions can go hand in hand with the Government's plans for citizenship education to form part of the national curriculum from 2002. Such education is about celebrating the diversity of modern Britain, not teaching people about only some aspects of our culture. It is about recognising that modern British society is made up of many different forms of culture. I hope that tackling racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia will be an integral part of the new citizenship curriculum.
Late last year, I had the privilege of seeing such good practice in action when I joined a seminar at St. Ignatius school, a local secondary school in Enfield, to discuss the holocaust. The seminar was led by two students, John Prendergast and Joseph Egan, who had joined a Holocaust Educational Trust delegation to Auschwitz and came back to report on their visit and discuss the historical context of the holocaust and its lessons for today. That is a good example of what we should include as part of citizenship in the national curriculum.
By creating a positive duty on public authorities, we can ensure that such good practice is spread throughout the country. The Bill will open the door to real progress towards racial equality. Strengthening race relations legislation is good not just for the minority ethnic communities, but for all of us.
Sit down, you black bastard.
I quote it so that I am not accused of holding back from what the chap said. He knows that what he said was wrong; all hon. Members know that it was wrong. However, it seems wrong for a man of unblemished record and 19 years of service to be drummed out of the police service after he had been provoked by a youth.
Mr. Hutt has another champion. Jerry--he would not give a surname--is a bouncer at a Fulham pub. The two men became friendly through Mr. Hutt's anti-hooliganism duties.
The Government are playing politics with our police service, and a wholly disproportionate penalty has been given to a man who is widely acknowledged in both communities as an extremely successful policeman. We are considering political correctness gone mad. It is unforgivable to expect police officers to keep up with all the twists and turns of what language offends specific minorities.
"I know all about racism. I have been stabbed for being black, and my personal belief is that everyone is racist to a certain extent," said Jerry, 34. "I am not saying that we are best buddies, but Steve and I are mates and he's a good guy. The country is screaming out for good policemen like him and a severe reprimand would have been enough. But we're talking politics."
We must at the same time warn some of those who are most vociferous in their condemnation of police officers that they should guard against their own racism. Not only during our Inquiry but in
9 Mar 2000 : Column 1263general there is readiness without justification to assume and to say that because police officers are white they must be acting to the disadvantage of minority ethnic communities. Racist prejudice and stereotyping can work and be evident both ways.
Not one Labour Member acknowledged that to be the case.
are likely to be additional costs to public authorities in relation to defending cases, settling cases, and paying damages if they lose cases.
We can say that again. They continue:
It is impossible to calculate what the overall financial effects of the Bill will be for those authorities
specified in the Bill. Furthermore, they say:
Additional public expenditure on the legal aid budget is also likely to arise from the new provision introduced in clause 1 . . .
Enormous costs will arise from the Bill--not only financial, but costs in terms of police morale, good race relations and effective policing.
In addition, there are likely to be significant costs to the legal aid budget arising from cases starting in the Immigration Appellate Authority . . .
validity of a common culture,
adding that black children needed to be taught black culture. Melanie Philips believes that this approach spelled
disaster for black children in Britain.
I agree with Melanie Philips. I feel that there is an element of racism in Sir Herman Ouseley's comment that black children need to be taught black culture. What about English children being taught English culture? If I said that in the House, I would be accused of being a racist.
Without access to English culture, without command of its language, appreciation of its literature or a grasp of the history of its institutions, black children will be unable to play an equal part in a society which assumes such access as a given.
If . . . the suggestion being made is that practices may be adopted by public bodies as well as private individuals which are unwittingly discriminatory against black people, then this is an allegation which deserves serious consideration and, where proved, swift remedy.
Two decades later, we finally have the opportunity to provide that swift remedy, which Lord Scarman called for in the early 1980s.
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