Last month I held an important meeting at Brent Civic Centre on reforming ‘stop and search’ powers. I was pleased to be joined by local councillors, leaders in the community, representatives from the police, policing associations and others.

I was also joined by an influential coalition of groups including Stopwatch UK, Liberty, Amnesty, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Runnymede Trust – all of whom have been doing important work on this issue.

I was determined that this meeting would not be about what was wrong, but what we would all do to ensure that police stop powers undergo overdue reform.

It is well documented that between 2010 and 2018, only 15% of people stopped and searched were arrested. In what other line of work would something with such a poor success rate continue to be used?

Such a low success rate also means that many interactions between the police and local communities are negative, which only fosters distrust and hostility.

We all need stop and search to work effectively. Some people, like the government, have tried to disguise this measure to improve a failing system by saying that I want to defund the police.

The only people defunding the police is this Tory government, by removing 21,700 police officers and 23,500 police support staff. You cut a service to the bone and they will begin to take shortcuts.

I, on the other hand, want the opposite – I want more local police and more police resources, so that policing can be done in an intelligent and evidenced based way.

Stop and search is also quite clearly discriminatory. The national statistics show that black people are ten times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

We simply cannot continue to rely on a system that disproportionally targets Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. That is why the focus of the meeting was on practical changes and improvements.

Section 163 stops in which people are pulled over by police on the roads are not subject to basic safeguards, such as reporting requirements. This is a major problem when you discover that this is done around 5.5 million times per year, and is a daily occurrence for people of colour.

I am pleased that during my meeting Brent’s Borough Commander agreed to trialling some of the recommendations in the important ‘Driving While Black’ report by Stopwatch and Liberty, which called for an end to discriminatory policing on our roads.

I am also pleased that one of the measures that Brent police will be trialling is to ensure that a record is kept of all stops made by the police – this would include the reason for the stop, the outcome, and the self-defined ethnic identity of the person stopped.

Frankly these measures should already be happening, the McPherson Report Section 61 made this suggestion 21 years ago!

Cressida Dick needs to answer why, after 21 years, this has not been implemented. Once we identify, we can further ascertain any trends or misuse. I am grateful that this will be trialled in Brent and then hopefully rolled out across London.

I am pleased that our local force, in response to our meeting, will be reaching out to obtain wider community feedback on the use of vehicle stops to help them understand how local communities feel. This outreach work is vital, and I hope this will lead to greater community-based policing.

I also want to make clear that Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was invited to the meeting but sadly did not attend despite previously committing to do so. I have said in the past that I am concerned by her language in denying the presence of institutional racism in her force.

While I understand it may be hard for her to admit there is institutional racism, as someone who has been in policing for a long time, I hope she will instead take this as an opportunity to work together to fix it. Leadership from the top is vital if there is to be change.

Acknowledging institutional racism does not mean that every officer is racist – Cressida Dick has spoken about the need to remove some bad officers, and that’s obviously welcomed. But if the system is institutionally racist, outcome will be racist whether the individual is racist or not. So we need to tackle it for the benefit of everyone in our society.

I am conscious of the sensitivities around this subject and the abuse I receive from people who claim to be ex-police officers worries me. But I can assure you that bad policing and bad police officers are bad for the police service in general – and good police officers especially.

It is important to know that the government has launched a consultation for new stop and search powers for the police. I worry these new powers are inviting discrimination into law. The consultation ends on November 8th and it is vital that the community makes their voices heard.

The police themselves have not asked for more powers. What they need is more resources and equipment fit for 21st century policing. Violent crime has gone up under this Conservative government, which shows that their approach is not working. It is time for a public health approach.

As well as following the progress on the trialling of the Driving While Black recommendations, I will continue my regular contact with the police towards national reform to stop and search laws and rooting out racial bias in policing. I also aim to bring forward legislative changes through my work in parliament. And I will shortly be attending Hendon training centre to undergo police training.

I am determined that this collective work will allow us to find real solutions to these problems. In the UK we police by consent, and with violent crime rising we need the consent and co-operation of all communities to ensure our streets are safe.