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Dr. Julian Lewis: Does my hon. Friend agree that when a new community comes to live in a host country, one of the inevitable initial problems is language? Does he agree that, as with my grandfather who could not read or write English properly until the end of his life, what really counts is that children and grandchildren of an immigrant community make the effort to integrate with the English language and the English culture? Does he agree that we must pay due attention to the need for incoming communities to adopt the language of the host community?
Mr. Lidington: We could have a long debate about educational minority support grants and section 11 funding. I agree that fluency in both written and spoken English is an essential passport for many people from new immigrant communities to entering the mainstream of British life. The communities themselves are certainly responsible for that, because they have an interest in taking advantage of opportunities here; but those of us who exercise leadership in politics are responsible for doing all we can to ensure that the opportunity to gain proficiency in the English language is given as soon as possible to those who need help.
Immense problems remain, as hon. Members on both sides have said. We must be honest about the mistrust of our police forces among British blacks and British Asians, particularly among young men from those communities. I saw that mistrust when I was a candidate for an inner-London seat about a decade ago. It is disturbing, and it merits political action on its own terms. However, mistrust also makes the police less effective in fighting crime, because it means that they are denied information and evidence that they need to secure convictions, including the conviction of those who are terrorising members of the ethnic minority communities themselves.
I have no doubt that the problem of mistrust of the police among young British blacks and Asians has been worsened by the mishandling of the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence by the Metropolitan police. However, the roots of the problem go deeper than that. They derive in part from the experience of discrimination--perceived and actual--and from a belief that the police, and the white majority, have not taken racial harassment or racial attacks sufficiently seriously. The hon. Member for Bradford, West was unfair in his strictures on the previous Government, who took some steps towards improving the priority given to this problem.
The matter was brought home to me only just after my election to this place in 1992. On one of the first occasions that I visited the Aylesbury mosque, I saw some extremely offensive racist graffiti that had been painted on a wall nearby. Yes, they were offensive, and if the wall had been plastered with graffiti about the Conservative party, I should probably have complained and grumbled a bit. Indeed, during the previous Parliament, one might have borne that with a certain amount of equanimity--Labour Members may soon have to learn to do the same.
However, when I talked to members of the Muslim community in my constituency, I was struck by how the graffiti had taken on tremendous significance--they felt they showed how they were seen by other people in the town. Although I understand that those responsible for that graffiti were caught and convicted, members of the Muslim community felt--rightly or wrongly--that that act made their acceptance within the community of Aylesbury less secure than it had been or than they wanted it to be. For that reason, I came to the view that we have a duty to ensure not only that we understand that racial harassment and racial attacks are evil in themselves, but that they have a profound social effect because they poison community relations in a town or district.
Sometimes, young people from the ethnic minorities--although not exclusively--receive some brusque treatment from police officers. I shall mention the difficulties of the police later in my speech. However, those of us who make a point of supporting the police also need to bear in mind that the experiences of my noble Friend Lord Taylor of Warwick or the Bishop of Stepney demonstrate that there is a genuine problem, which, to their credit, the police are actively trying to address.
The other half of the problem is that the police themselves feel beleaguered--especially in London and other great cities. They, too, often go in fear of physical attack or threat. We are rightly offended and ashamed by the fact that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence are still free to swagger around the streets of south London. The grief and sense of loss of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence can never be assuaged by anything that we do in this place. However, it is also true that the murderers of Keith Blakelock are walking around free somewhere in north London. The people who maimed Richard Coombes and drove him from the career that he loved are still walking free. Their families' suffering can never be assuaged by Act of Parliament.
The police rightly feel that they have been unfairly traduced in some of the debate consequent on the Macpherson report. A detective constable told me that, on the day the report was published, he had attended Southwark Crown court where he gave evidence as the officer in charge of a case that resulted in a long custodial sentence for a man guilty of racial attacks. The constable said that, even after all the efforts of the Scotland Yard press office, that case merited about two inches somewhere on page 8 of a newspaper. It had taken weeks of painstaking police work and dedication to assemble the evidence to secure that conviction, but that seemed to be of no account in the hurricane of criticism that descended on the force in which he served.
When we talk about labels such as institutional racism, we should be clear about several points. I am not persuaded that the failures of service experienced by the Lawrence family and other people in that case were exclusive to people in the black community. I know of a
fair number of white youths who feel that the police treated them roughly and brusquely when they were stopped. There is a wider problem that the label of institutional racism does not accurately describe.
As my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) pointed out, the label of institutional racism--whatever the wording in Sir William Macpherson's report--has led, in practice, to a widespread belief among police officers that they have all been branded as racists. Many people think that that is the charge that has been levelled at the Metropolitan police. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham said, the last thing that any of us wants is a state of affairs in which the use of the label aggrieves the police, fuels resentment among ethnic communities and brings about the very state of confrontation that we all want to end.
Mr. Stephen Twigg:
I am listening carefully to the balanced approach that the hon. Gentleman is taking--in stark contrast to the speech of the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth). When I spoke earlier, I suggested that the hon. Gentleman could take the opportunity to repudiate the remarks of the hon. Member for Aldershot. I would be grateful if he would do that.
Mr. Lidington:
I was about to say that I do not agree--I have made that clear in what I have said hitherto--with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) said. However, the House would be foolish if it ignored the fact that the opinions that he quite legitimately expressed are shared by many of our fellow citizens. It is right that those arguments should be addressed maturely in debate rather than being simply pilloried and branded, which is not the way forward. He expressed his concerns about the Bill's possible impact on stop and search, and those concerns are shared quite widely by many people who would probably share the principled opposition to racism that the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate outlined in his speech.
One police superintendent told me that he was under great pressure from ethnic community leaders in his patch to reconsider his stop-and-search practices. He had done so, and he found that his officers had indeed stopped a disproportionately large number of people from a particular ethnic minority. However, he then described the difficulty that he faced. When he examined the papers case by case, he discovered that his officers had stopped frequently a relatively small number of people who had been identified through intelligence-led policing as villains who were involved in the type of street crime that stop-and-search techniques are extremely useful in deterring and in helping to secure convictions for. He asked how he was supposed to reconcile good, intelligence-led policing with what he believed were the demands on him to reduce the number of stops to match the ethnic proportions of the population that he served.
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