Badenoch criticises Macpherson report and calls for more stop and search

Kemi Badenoch has argued that Britain took a wrong turn after the landmark Macpherson report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence, and said that it didn’t matter how many young black boys were stopped and searched by police.

The Conservative leader made the comments as she announced plans to scrap the obligation on public bodies to consider how they can promote equality as she seeks to head off the challenge to her party from Reform UK.

The Southport murders of three young girls, the Nottingham stabbings, and Manchester Arena bombing could all have been stopped if public authorities had not feared being called racist, Badenoch argued during a speech in which she cited the incidents as examples of where equalities law had gone too far.

“All these crimes could have been stopped if people had intervened instead of having a fear of being called racist,” she said.

Badenoch also used the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, who was falsely accused of racism by his murderer, as a reason for why she believed a wrong turn had been taken by the Macpherson report, which was prompted by the racially motivated killing of Lawrence in 1993.

“Stephen Lawrence’s murder resulted in the influential Macpherson report, a report that wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s,” said Badenoch.

“However, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong: that a racist incident is racist, if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.”

“This may have made sense in a different context long ago, but today when we look at the response to Henry Nowak’s murder, and the police’s acceptance that the murderer was correct when he accused Henry of racism, it’s clear that mere accusations are being accepted as facts.”

The report had ultimately morphed into the public sector equality duty (PSED), a legal requirement obliging public bodies to think how they can improve society and promote equality in their day-to-day business, and which the Tory leader committed to scrapping.

Badenoch listed other examples where she felt public bodies including the police were prevented from doing their jobs because they were “conditioned to see minority status as victimhood”.

Referring to her party’s plans to triple stop and search incidents, she took aim at police guidance that she said explicitly stated people should be treated differently based on their protected characteristics, adding: “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter if more black boys are searched, because it means more black lives will be saved.”

A report earlier this year found that black people are up to 48 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in some of London’s best-off areas.