Terrorism: Stop and Search

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent estimate his Department has made of the proportion of people from an ethnic minority background who have been stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 since the Act came into force. (324128)

Information on stop and search section 44 is collected centrally by the Home Office and provisional data are published quarterly in the official statistics publication ‘Operation of police powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 and subsequent legislation: arrest, outcomes and stops and searches, Great Britain.’ The most recent publication (released February 2010) provides an update to 30 September 2009 and shows that of the 200,444 people stopped and searched under section 44 in the year ending 30 September 2009, 63,535 individuals self-identified as from a Black, Asian, Chinese/Other or of mixed ethnicity background. This equates to 32 per cent. of the total recorded for this period.

The data are published quarterly and the latest update can be found here:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb0410.pdf

This data are considered provisional and full quality assured data are published by the Home Office in the annual statistical report 'Police Powers and Procedure,' further ethnicity breakdown will be available in the Ministry of Justice annual report on 'Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System.'