Racial disproportionality and misuse of police powers undermine policing by consent. In the year ending March 2025, Black Londoners were 3.6 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white Londoners. A 2026 report by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and King’s College London identified 24 wards where disproportionality was most acute, where a Black Londoner could be up to 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white Londoner. The research also found that the grounds used to justify stops and searches of Black Londoners were often vaguer than those used for white Londoners, raising concerns about discriminatory application.
Accountability is further weakened by gaps in police data recording. Officers failed to record the ethnicity of individuals searched in 30% of section 1 searches (36,824 of 121,148) and 48% of section 60 searches (686 of 1,437) conducted by the Met. These figures are well above the national average.
Achieving Baroness Casey's recommendation on introducing governance structures for accountability and transparency requires addressing the current regulatory deficit in police oversight. Misuse of police powers and racial disproportionality in their implementation cannot be tackled effectively while police inspectorate statutory bodies do not have the power to enforce their recommendations. HMICFRS and the IOPC should be granted the power to adopt a responsive regulation approach to hold the Met accountable for noncompliance. This should include an escalating set of responses to the Met where it repeatedly fails to abide by the above standards and policing protocol, with suspension of powers (e.g. stop and search) as the ultimate sanction.
For a full explanation of our position, please download and read our submission.