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A Metropolitan Police Service officer who was found to have racially profiled a Black driver during a stop-and-search last year will face no penalty for their actions.The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) launched an investigation after a 27-year-old man was stopped after being observed by officers while driving in Old Kent Road in south London, in May 2020. The victim was placed in handcuffs and had a Taser pointed at him, and his car and his three passengers were searched under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The watchdog found that one officer had a case to answer for misconduct due to bias as he racially profiled the man during the incident, did not provide adequate grounds for the stop and failed to follow the guidance provided by the College of Policing.It was also found that the officer breached coronavirus force policy by failing to wear proper PPE and could have used tactics to de-escalate the situation rather than handcuffing and using the ‘red-dot’ function of the Taser on the man.The Metropolitan Police Service agreed that the officer should address these issues and focus on what constitutes reasonable grounds for stop and search and consider the impact of the disproportionate use of stop and search on Black and minority ethnic communities.The force said the IOPC had agreed the officer should take part in equality and diversity training, but will face no other action over the incident.IOPC Regional Director Sal Naseem said: “Stop and search is an important policing tool but can also be very intrusive and affect the trust and confidence that Black communities have in the police service. It is vital it is used with care. “Our investigation found evidence that racial bias played a part in an officer’s decision to stop the member of the public and the officer will now have to reflect and learn from this.“It is this sort of incident that can undermine the legitimacy of stop and search as a policing tactic.”He added: “For those members of the community affected disproportionally by the use of stop and search, they must have confidence that racial bias plays no part in how this policing power is used.”In a statement to The Independent, the Met said the officer’s future stop and search data will be reviewed by his supervisor to review any potential for unconscious bias.A spokesperson added: “In all three instances (relating to the search carried out by the officer, racial profiling and lack of PPE) the IOPC concluded that there was misconduct and agreed that should be addressed through reflective practice for the officer concerned, including reviewing the relevant legislation relating to stop and search powers as well as completing further training in this area. “Stop and search is a vitally important tool in the fight against violence and associated criminality and we are acutely aware that its use must be justifiable in every instance. We are also aware of the impact it has on the black community. “Where our standards slip below where they should be, we should be challenged and rightfully held to account. On this occasion the IOPC and MPS agree that the officer involved should reflect on their performance and actions to determine whether a better outcome could be achieved in future.” More

Campaigners have launched a legal challenge against a blanket ban on elderly residents making trips away from their care homes, saying the government’s guidance strips people of their basic rights and effectively turns sheltered accomodation into a “prison”.Under the rules, which were updated last month, people in residential care over the age of 65 are prevented from leaving home apart from in exceptional cases.This, campaigners say, prevents residents from enjoying simple activities such as walking in a local park.Those who are permitted to leave the care home, for example to visit a friend or relative at the end of their life, must self-isolate for 14 days on their return.John’s Campaign, which has campaigned for the rights of families and care homes residents throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, has launched a legal challenge against the ban and the quarantine rule.Read more:The group said the imposition of a blanket ban, and the failure to communicate and ensure individualised risk assessments are taken for every resident who wishes to make a visit out, is unlawful.They argue that an individual who is 64 but may suffer from conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to infection could have an individualised risk assessment that would allow them to take a trip out of the home, but an individual aged 66 who may be less vulnerable to infection is not afforded the same right.In a letter sent to the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), the group also questions the requirement to self-isolate, arguing that as care homes now have rapid testing, designated visitors are permitted and residents are vaccinated, the requirement is unnecessary.Julia Jones, co-founder of John’s Campaign, said: “I am at a loss to understand how the basic right of a person living in a care home to make their own simple choices over a walk in the park, for instance, has been so comprehensively ignored – and denied – over the past 12 months. “The 440,000 people living in care homes include some who moved in through their own volition, with full mental capacity, never guessing that this simple freedom, enjoyed by everyone else in the population – apart from prisoners – could so easily be denied them.”Nicci Gerrard, also co-founder of the group, called the rules “discriminatory, harmful and wrong”.She said: “Care homes are not prisons, and people living in them should have the same rights as everyone else in society.“What’s more, to make them self-isolate for 14 days if they do leave the care home is to cruelly continue to enforce separation from those they love that has blighted too many lives in the past year.”Tessa Gregory, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, which is supporting the challenge, said: “Care home residents and their families have suffered disproportionately through the pandemic both from the virus itself but also from enforced isolation.“It is vital that as the rules are relaxed for the general population, care homes residents are not left behind. “There is no reason, if appropriate precautions are taken, to prevent residents over working age from having much needed visits out and it also cannot be right that if residents do leave their homes they always have to always isolate for 14 days on their return.”A DHSC spokesperson said: “We know just how crucial visits are in supporting the health and wellbeing of residents. Our current guidance provides a range of opportunities for visitors to meet and spend time with their loved ones in a care home under carefully designed conditions to keep everyone safe.“Residents over 65 can make visits outside of care homes in exceptional circumstances and all decisions in relation to visiting should be made on the basis of a risk assessment centred around the individual. This is made clear in our guidance.“As we move along the roadmap, we are looking to open up more opportunities for visiting both into and outside of care homes – wherever this can be done safely and is supported by data.” More

Britain is no longer a country where the “system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”, according to the “insulting” and “divisive” report by the Race Commission, appointed by the government in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.Months overdue, and 258 pages long, the report’s findings and 24 recommendations feature some staggering assertions – and a lot of glaring omissions. The body, headed by prime minister Boris Johnson’s friend and former charity boss Dr Tony Sewell, argued that geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion all impact life chances more than racism. Evidence of institutional racism, it says, was not found. The commission was established by Munira Mirza, a No 10 adviser who has previously expressed doubts over the existence of institutional racism. Dr Sewell has said the same. And sponsoring minister, Kemi Badenoch, has made similar remarks, denying “systemic injustice” has an impact on Covid death rates, and saying it should be illegal to teach the concept of white privilege in schools. All of this has been carried out at the behest of the PM, whose history of racist remarks has been well documented.There have been concerns about other members of the board and their politics, which seem to be invariably aligned with Conservative values. Hence some have questioned the extent to which this purported independent commission is in fact independent.Indeed, shortly after the commission panel was announced last summer, I spoke with Lord Simon Woolley who described them as a “motley crew of deniers” on the “profound nature of systemic racism” which, he added, has been brutally exposed by Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter. Now that the report has finally been published – after an extraordinary four-month delay – it is clear that the commission has cherry picked data to suit its narrative, one which gaslights ethnic minority communities by suggesting institutional racism is a mere figment of their imaginations. It offers an incomplete picture of what drives inequalities and disparity in outcomes across the UK, and misses vital parts of the puzzle. AccountabilityThroughout the 258-page report, the commission notes that the Black Lives Matter protests last year saw many young people in Britain calling for change.It further states that while it understands the “idealism” of these “well-intentioned” young people who have protested for racial equality, it questions whether a narrative claiming that nothing has improved “will achieve anything beyond alienating the decent centre ground”.Activists, particularly those with experience of campaigning, have seldom claimed that nothing at all has changed. But more needs to change to achieve a society that’s fair – including the dismantling of institutional racism. By denying its existence, the government avoids accountability for the ills which continue to plague the lives of marginalised groups. This is further demonstrated through the commission’s call for more research into why “some ethnic minority groups are doing better than others” and whether this is due to differences in family structures, social networks or health behaviours such as alcohol and smoking. The report notes improvements such as increasing diversity in elite professions which have often been measured by the same “Bame” label which the commission is now lobbying to get rid of – partly due to the unreliable data it yields, insofar as not knowing how each ethnic minority group fares within that bracket.By clear contrast, current statistics paint a grim picture of the reality: Black mothers are four times more likely to die during childbirth, in which racism has been cited as a factor. Institutional racism was also found to have been a factor in the Windrush Scandal, which is very much ongoing, and Black men are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police.Perhaps the clearest omission in the report is the dismissal of people’s real, everyday and often painful lived experiences. Over the years, numerous reports have been produced which have cited and evidenced the existence of institutional racism and structural inequalities in British society such as The Lawrence Review (2020) and The Windrush Lessons Learned Review (2020), beyond the sporadic instances of racist trolling online as cited by Sewell in this new report. Anecdotally, virtually everyone from within ethnic minority communities has spoken of very real lived experiences of grappling with the same sort of ingrained discrimination – and yet this report does not acknowledge this.So why then, did the commission very quietly ask for evidence from the public to “better understand why racial disparities thrive in Britain”, rather than launching an open invitation far and wide?This failure to seek and search for evidence from all corners of the country, to interrogate fully these tragically widespread experiences of racism, smacks of a wilful reluctance of the report authors to open their eyes to evidence they did not want to see. More

At least 10 EU countries will no longer extradite their nationals to face prosecution in the UK because of Brexit, the government has admitted.In correspondence with the House of Lords EU Committee, it said Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden will be “invoking constitutional rules as reason not to extradite their own nationals to the UK”. A letter from the Home Office said it amounted to “an absolute bar on the extradition of own nationals” to the UK.Additionally, Austria and the Czech Republic will only extradite their own nationals to Britain with their consent. It means that British authorities may have to attempt prosecutions in other countries, or circulate wanted criminals on an Interpol database in the hope they leave their home nation and can be caught elsewhere.The UK was previously part of the European Arrest Warrant system, which allows a streamlined extradition process between EU states and has been used for high-profile terrorists, drug smugglers and murderers.Read more:As part of its post-Brexit security agreement, the UK has drawn up new extradition processes, but they do not have the same power to bypass constitutional barriers.EU states can also refuse to surrender suspected criminals if the alleged offence does not exist in their country, or it is a “political” crime.Richard Martin, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead on Brexit planning, previously told the Home Affairs Committee that a new national extradition unit was formed in December.He said that where countries refuse to extradite suspects, police have two choices: “One is we work with the Crown Prosecution Service and decide whether it is in the public interest to try and prosecute these individuals in their home countries. “The second is we circulate them anyway on Interpol because as soon as they enter another country they’re fair game, so we can arrest them in that country and bring them back.”A report published by the Lords EU Committee on Friday said the new extradition arrangements were “untested” and that their “operational effectiveness” should be scrutinised.Dominic Raab Admits Security Tools At Risk After Brexit After Theresa May Raises ConcernsPeers also raised concern over the capability of the EU to terminate security cooperation over data protection rules and human rights.Committee chair Lord Ricketts, a former national security adviser, said that although the agreement had avoided a feared “cliff-edge” for law enforcement, there were “still grounds for considerable caution”. “These are a complex and untested set of arrangements and their effectiveness will depend crucially on how they are implemented at the operational level,” he added. “The provisions on data protection are particularly fragile. If the UK does not remain in step with changes to EU data protection laws, or if the UK is found to have breached fundamental rights when handling personal data, then this could trigger the suspension, or even termination, of all the justice and security cooperation.”The report said that the EU will continue to monitor UK data protection rules, and hold it to “higher standards” as a country outside the EU. Peers warned that the situation increases the scope for legal challenges, which could trigger a suspension of the security agreement.The document states that it can be terminated by either the UK or EU with nine months’ notice, for reasons including derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).It is enshrined in British law through the Human Rights Act – but that is currently under review.The law enforcement part of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement allows the continued sharing of policing and criminal justice data, including on DNA, fingerprints, air passenger information and criminal records.But the UK lost access to the EU Schengen Information System (SIS II) database, which was previously integrated with the Police National Computer and searched more than 600 million times a year.The Lords EU Committee report called the change the “most significant gap in terms of lost capability”, adding: “It means that, for the time being, law enforcement officers can no longer immediately have access to real-time data about persons and objects of interest, including wanted and missing persons. “The fallback system, the Interpol I-24/7 database, currently provides data in a matter of hours, not seconds.”Peers said that its success “depends heavily” on EU states accepting the additional workload of ‘double-keying’ data into both the SIS II and Interpol systems. “We did not receive any clear evidence from the government on how it planned to secure such commitments from EU member states to do so,” the report said.“We therefore remain concerned about the effect of the loss of access to SIS II on the operational effectiveness of UK police and law enforcement agencies.” More

Fewer daffofils are being harvested in the UK due to a shortage of workers caused in part by Brexit, a bulb grower has said.Taylors Bulbs in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, normally harvests around 2.5 million cut daffodil flowers in the average year. Due to a lack of pickers, the firm expects to harvest just a third of that quantity in 2021.Kevin Haynes, horticulture manager, blames this on the lack of pickers. He says numbers of seasonal workers coming to the UK to pick flowers from abroad have shrunk.In their firm this has meant going from a “normal” number of 150 to just 30 this year.Flower growers across the country are being affected by Brexit restrictions and the end of free movement as the UK is no longer part of the EU.Seasonal workers are allowed into the country from further afield with a visa, but this only applies to picking edible crops meaning that flowers are exempt.Read more:“Because of Brexit we’re not allowed to bring in staff,” said Mr Haynes, adding:”We’re not allowed to bring people over for flowers and ornamental, it’s only for fruit and veg.”The horticulture manager went on to say how the company is not exporting any flowers this year, even though normally around one third of their daffodils would be sent abroad.In spite of the disruption, Mr Haynes called it a “good year” and said that although flowers need to be picked by hand, bulbs themselves can be picked by machine.Any pickers working on the harvest come from an agency and are part of the same bubble, Mr Haynes said.The season for daffodil picking lasts for around eight to 10 weeks, from February to April. More

The graffiti appeared across two locations in east Belfast – a wall in the Belvoir Street area and on a commercial building in the Newtownards Road area.The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) launched the investigation on Wednesday, with the south’s Garda Síochána being kept in the loop – particularly the teams who provide protection for tánaiste Mr Varadkar and foreign affairs minister Mr Coveney.Mr Varadkar’s name and address were displayed next to a loyalist sign depicting two gunmen and the words: “The prevention of the erosion of our identity is now our priority. East Belfast Battalion.”Various loyalist logos, including those of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Protestant Action Force (PAF), can be seen on the mark too. It is the latest in a string of graffiti threats in Belfast as anger over the Northern Ireland protocol, implemented as a result of Brexit, continues to grow. Read more:In January, a smear titled “an ode to Leo Varadkar” was painted in the Belvoir area of south Belfast, warning the ex-taoiseach he would be hanged if he “set foot in Ulster”. A PNSI spokesperson said in a statement “officers are aware of the graffiti … and inquiries are ongoing”. While no arrests have been made for any of the offences yet, the graffiti is thought to be part of a campaign by unionists who feel the protocol – which effectively creates a border in the Irish Sea for goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland – cuts them off from the rest of the UK.On a visit to Belfast last week, Boris Johnson admitted the measure was not operating as he envisaged and promised to address the concerns being raised by MLAs and their constituents. A number of Northern Ireland politicians have spoken out to condemn the latest graffiti threats, with East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson labelling them “pathetic”. He told the Belfast Telegraph that he had contacted Belfast City Council, which confirmed that the sinister message would be removed on Wednesday.Meanwhile UUP leader Steve Aiken described the graffiti as “absolutely despicable”.“Nobody should be doing this sort of thing. It’s very clear that all politicians and everybody in society should call out these sorts of activities,” the South Antrim MLA told the newspaper.“Whether it’s Michael Gove, Simon Coveney, Leo Varadkar or whoever it happens to be, it’s completely unacceptable.”Neither Mr Varadkar nor Simon Coveney have commented on the situation yet, though it is understood they are being kept up to date on developments.The Independent has contacted their representatives for comment. More

New powers to crack down on protests are not needed and go “too far”, senior police and crime commissioners have said.MPs will vote on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which would lower the threshold at which police can impose legally-binding restrictions on protests, and make it easier to prosecute people for violating them.Human rights groups have called the plans “an all-out assault on our right to protest”, and demonstrations were being mounted outside parliament ahead of the vote.Read more:“These are local matters for chief constables in consultations with PCCs, and I was concerned to see the draft clauses in the bill,” he said.“I think politicians would be wise to leave decisions to the responsible people … they’ve got to leave people to make local decisions in local circumstances.”Martin Surl, vice-chair of the APCC, said police “have the laws needed already”.“When you make these laws, you can’t pick laws for the protests you like and don’t like,” he added. “If you’re protesting about Me Too, climate change, racism, the laws have got to be the same. Police constables are operationally independent and don’t have an agenda, which some politicians do.”Mr Surl, who is the politically independent PCC for Gloucestershire, said: “I don’t like law for law’s sake, especially on freedom of protest. More

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill entered parliament last week, and will be debated by ministers on Monday and Tuesday. It contains a number of proposals which the government itself has conceded will have a disproportionate impact on Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in equality assessments.The government has justified this inequality as “a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting the public”. However, in another official document, the government admits there is “limited evidence that the combined set of measures will deter offenders long term or reduce overall crime” and therefore cannot be guaranteed to actually benefit society.The organisations call for the ministers to withdraw the elements of the bill it acknowledges will increase racial inequality and launch a public consultation around the changes to avoid discrimination.Nina Champion, Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, said: “These unnecessary and discriminatory changes to sentencing and police powers will deepen existing racial inequalities, sweeping more Black, Asian and minority ethnic people into the criminal justice system for increasing periods of their lives.Read more:“They will also miss out on the more positive proposals in the Bill. Initiatives to divert people from the criminal justice system into community rehabilitation will depend on a guilty plea, and we know Black, Asian and minority people are less likely to plead guilty due to distrust in the system. Rather than reducing racial inequality, as the government has committed to do, this Bill does the complete opposite.”In a policy paper relating to the the bill, the Ministry of Justice admitted: “By virtue of the overrepresentation of these groups in the cohort of offender to which this policy applies, we acknowledge that any adverse impacts arising from these changes will be more likely to affect male and Black offenders.”“While the available data shows that Black children are disproportionately represented in the youth custodial remand population, the evidence that BAME offenders may be perceived as a higher risk suggests they may be less likely to benefit from these changes,” it added. More