SUELLA BRAVERMAN was accused of promoting stereotypes of Black youth being violent after the Home Secretary ordered police to “ramp up” stop and search.

The claim came on the day when the government was accused of a triple assault on the Black community, with reports that she plans to restrict council housing to “British nationals.”

That news was labelled as “speculation” by the Home Office, which was not a denial.

The housing issue was branded a reintroduction of the disgraced “sons and daughters” policy for council housing allocation, which was scrapped in the 1980s.

In other news, it was reported that Braverman intends to and reinforcing the hostile environment by axe a Whitehall team tasked with preventing a future Windrush scandal.

Black Equity Organisation accused the Home Secretary of turning her back on the Windrush generation.

Braverman’s stop and search announcement was slammed by senior MP Diane Abbott, who accused the Home Secretary of wanting the police to “harass” more Black young men, and warned she was “playing a dangerous game” that could spark public disorder.

Abbott also said the prospect of giving “priority” to British nationals over migrants was possibly legal under equalities law which forbids denial of services on the basis of race and nationality.

The housing news was condemned as being “straight out of the BNP playbook” by Labour MP Kate Osamor.

Abbott, who was Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary until 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn, told The Voice that Braverman’s plans to ramp up stop and search was “quite outrageous.”

She said: “What the data says, and has said for some time, is that stop and search mostly finds small quantities of cannabis for personal use. 

“It doesn’t find guns, it doesn’t find knives, but it is a vehicle for harassing young black men.

“So when Suella says she wants it ramped up, what she means it is she wants them to harass more young Black men.”

She added: “I just think that she wants to present herself as someone who is ‘tough on Blacks’, to appeal to a certain faction of the Conservative Party membership, because everyone else knows that it’s not an effective tool against crime.

“I think she’s playing a dangerous game. If she wants to ramp it up even further, I think there is a danger of public disorder.

“People forget that the Brixton riots were partly precipitated by police stop and search in the community.”

Government figures show Black people are 7.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched, which factors in all age groups.

Young Black people are 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched, with 81 percent of arrests for cannabis possession.

A 2018 report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that Black people were less likely to smoke cannabis than white people.

More recently, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) says that cops should not use the smell of cannabis as a sole reason to conduct stop and searches on people.

The Home Secretary’s new Public Order Bill, currently going through parliament, has been accused of bringing back the ‘Sus Laws’ because it plans to scrap the ‘reasonable suspicion’ test for stop and search.

Previously, police could only officially engage in ‘random’ stop and search under time-limited ‘Section 60’ powers.

The absence of reasonable suspicion was widely believed to give the green light to unrestricted racial-profiling by officers under the Sus Laws, which were abolished in the aftermath of the 1981 uprisings.

The scrapping of reasonable suspicion was rejected by parliament in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, but Braverman is bringing it back to Westminster just one year later.

Abbott also criticised the plan, comparing it to the infamous “sons and daughters” housing allocation policy of the 1980s, which was ruled illegal four decades ago because it was judged to be racist. The British National Party ran on a platform of bringing it back in 2010.

Discrimination of “goods and services” was outlawed by the 1968 Race Relations Act, which was rolled into subsequent equalities laws, including the current Equality Act of 2010.

Abbott said the housing allocation plan would discriminate against Black and brown migrants rather than Ukrainians, and that it may well be illegal.

She said: “This business about prioritising council housing for British nationals; when my parents first came to this country, councils routinely had a policy which was called ‘sons and daughters’, and which meant that in order to be eligible for council housing of any type, you had to be a son or daughter of existing council tenants.

“And what that meant, in effect, is I didn’t house Black people; they only housed white people.

“This new policy proposal will bear down heavily on Black and minority people, and of course there’s not much council housing anyway.

“But what it does, I think, is it speaks to a narrative which says “they’re over here, they’re taking your jobs, they’re taking your housing?” And again, it’s about paying for certain section of the Tory base

“I would have thought that was illegal and may have to be tested in court.”

Last week, Braverman ordered cops to stop recording hate crime. She said officers must cease to record “non crimes”, leaving it up to police operating in institutionally-racist institutions to use their own judgement whether a reported crime was racially-motivated or not.

Defending her plans for “ramping up” stop and search, Braverman said: “Carrying weapons is a scourge on our society, and anyone doing so is risking their own lives as well as the lives of those around them. This dangerous culture must be brought to a stop.

“My first priority is to keep the public safe, and people who insist on carrying a weapon must know that there will be consequences. The police have my full support to ramp up the use of stop and search, wherever necessary, to prevent violence and save more lives.”

“Every death from knife crime is a tragedy. That’s why I also back the police in tackling this blight in communities which are disproportionately affected, such as among young black males. We need to do everything in our power to crack down on this violence.”

UPDATE 20/6/23

• The article has been amended to reflect the Home Office pointing out that the British nationals council housing story was “speculation.” It was reported as a government “plan” by The Times.
  • They point out that any plans around council housing policy was the responsibility of the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We are happy to make that clear.
    • We have declined to make any changes around the “narrative of racism” as we judge opinion in the article is fair comment. We have asked for more details around what they mean by this.
      • In relation to the Windrush scandal, aside from the latest figure of £73m paid in compensation, readers can find out more from our previous articles. You can find a selection here, here, here, here, here, here and here for a fuller picture.